Burrow
by Canadian Crow
Summary: Thirty years ago, the collapse of the St. Claire mega-burrow became one of the greatest tragedies in mammalian history, claiming the lives of nearly thirty-five thousand rabbits. Three decades later, a reporter from the Zootopia Herald has come to Bunnyburrow to learn about St. Claire, the day history nearly repeated itself at Homestead, and the heroes who rose from the ashes. [AU]
1. The Legacy of St Claire

**The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective  
** _by Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 **ooooo**

 **The fair sun shines upon ye now,  
A warmth that we shall n'er more know.  
So rise now, rabbit, drive the plough,  
We'll sleep among the rocks below.**

\- Excerpt from Nathan Furrier's poem, _The Sorrow of St. Claire_

ooooo

In the three decades since it occurred, the collapse of the St. Claire mega-burrow has come to be recognized as one of the greatest tragedies in mammalian history. Although the statistics vary, depending on the source, it's estimated that as many as thirty-five thousand rabbits lost their lives in the disaster.

So, when my editor asked me to write a thirtieth-anniversary retrospective on St. Claire, I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't immediately know what he was talking about. My meagre knowledge of St. Claire had been limited to high school textbooks, and to a recommended - but never watched - Nutflix documentary. Although I knew about the Tri-Burrow Counties in general terms and had heard it referred to as The Garden of Mammalia, I confess that I had never spared it much thought.

Like many mammals who grew up in Zootopia, I hadn't bothered to consider where the fruits and vegetables at the grocery store actually came from. Except to remember, perhaps, that they were grown by bunnies.

When asked about bunnies, there are two things that immediately occur to most mammals; they live underground, and they multiply. Some might even say the second is a consequence of the first. Rabbits are closely tied to their families. It's common for them to feel most secure when they, and those they care about, are safely nestled beneath the ground. So, it's natural to assume that when a rabbit burrow reaches its maximum capacity, those same rabbits would just dig out more space.

There was a time when that would have been accurate, but with the onset of the industrial age, rabbit agricultural operations expanded exponentially, and their population grew alongside it.

Rabbit families, once able to count the neighboring families on one paw, suddenly couldn't even scrape out a new room without breaking through into another family's burrow. In some cases, they tried digging upward without realizing that they were digging too close to the surface and starving the precious topsoil. In other cases, well-intentioned rabbits would dig deep and carve out a seemingly perfect space during the summer, only to have the autumn rain reveal that they'd burrowed beneath the water table. The result could range from damp passageways that brought on pneumonia, to sudden and unexpected flooding, to outright tunnel collapse. Too many rabbits – entire families, in some cases – were lost this way.

That was the crux of the problem; there just wasn't enough space for everyone. Although the farmers had plenty, Tri-Burrow law prohibited using any of the surrounding farmland for residential purposes. This meant that the families in town - mechanics, shop owners, distributors, agricultural suppliers and the thousands of other bunnies that kept the agricultural industry in motion – were too often left fighting for enough room.

The St. Claire mega-burrow was meant to be the solution. A collective effort by three architectural firms and over twenty construction contracting businesses, it was flaunted as a masterpiece of modern engineering; similar in many ways to a traditional burrow but constructed on a far grander scale. The foundations had been dug down to the bedrock, rather than just a few hundred feet, and at its widest point the burrow spanned over a mile.

Developed not only to serve as housing, but to function as a massive produce shipping hub, connecting tracks linked St. Claire to the main rail lines. The facilities there could accept, sort, and distribute Tri-Burrow produce to over a dozen cities; some as far away as the Pacific Frontier.

Possessing 200 individual levels, every imaginable amenity and boasting a maximum capacity of nearly fifty-thousand, it was designed to be an underground city. It was expected to be the blueprint for the burrow of the future, until flood waters from the nearby Willow Dam spillway overwhelmed the water-control systems in the early hours of November 23rd, 1988. As a result, the St. Claire mega-burrow suffered a critical failure in its primary foundations that in turn led to a chain reaction throughout the mega-burrow's support structure. At 8:03 am ZST, the structure buckled, and St. Claire went into a catastrophic collapse. It's estimated that approximately twenty-eight thousand rabbits lost their lives in the initial fall - some in tunnels so deep that there exists no hope of ever recovering the bodies – and another sixty-five hundred would be lost in the days that followed.

However, rather than simply re-tell the story of St. Claire, this retrospective will focus on the years that followed – the repercussions of the disaster, the social fallout, and the responses from the Tri-Burrow government – leading all the way up to the only event that deserves mention alongside St. Claire - the incident at Homestead, just two years ago.

As a part of my research, I travelled out to the Tri-Burrow Counties with the intention of speaking to some of the mammals personally involved in both events. I expected to find a few anecdotes that would place the events in a relatable light. What I found, however, was a series of captivating personal accounts that brought the emotion of both St. Claire and Homestead into sharp relief.

This is why rather than submitting an impersonal – albeit purely factual - article, I fought to convince my editor that we should instead publish some of the interviews I collected. If he'd allowed me the opportunity, I would have published every word from everyone I spoke to. Instead, I have focused on the accounts that I feel best represent the thousands of mammals impacted by these tragedies.

To that end, I can only hope that they have as meaningful an impact on you as they did on myself.

-o—o—o—o—o—o—o-

 **This is an AU piece that I've been tinkering with for a little while now, placed in an alternate timeline for our dynamic duo.**

 **The geekier among us might recognize the oral-history format as being similar to the World War Z novel, while the geekiest among us may notice a pattern in future chapter titles.**


	2. Pt 1 - Dark Water

**The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective**  
 **Part 1: Dark Water**  
 _\- Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 **ooooo**

 **"I might not have been able to change what happened, but I could figure out _why_ it happened."**  
Otto Hopps – Rabbit  
Survivor of St. Claire Collapse

 **ooooo**

 **I'm ushered into the kitchen to find Otto Hopps sitting at the window, watching his grandchildren and great-grandchildren working in the fields. His granddaughter, who affectionately refers to the elderly rabbit as 'Pop-Pop', introduces us and Otto immediately invites me to join him at the table.**

 **The oldest member of the Hopps family is now in his early eighties; his once grey fur has gone almost completely white. Prior to St. Claire, Otto was a renowned expert in the field of hydroponic farming. After St. Claire, he became the one of the world's leading experts on the Collapse, and the driving force behind the now-famous Hopps/Westfield Report.**

 **As we speak, he occasionally turns back to the window to his family at work.**

I've heard that some city rabbits take offense to the idea that most rabbits work in agriculture. They say it's an old-fashioned stereotype, that rabbits can be found in all manner of careers, and so on and so forth. Well, I don't care what they say. Farming is, and always has been, a noble and time-honored profession for us. The earth is just a part of who we are; might as well be written on our bones.

Did you know that some families can trace their farm's history back for hundreds of years, passed from father to son and from mother to daughter for dozens of generations?

 **I didn't.**

Well, they can.

Farming isn't just about scraping around in the dirt, either. Rabbits have always been of the cutting-edge of agricultural technology. While other farming mammals were still hiring oxen farmhands to pull their ploughs, we were already using tractors. When they were still overpaying for fertilizer from those damn price-gouging cattle conglomerates, we were developing our own mushroom-based alternatives. Hell, we were using _midnicampum_ -based pesticides long before mammals in the city started braying about organic produce.

For me, it was hydroponic farming. At the time of St. Claire, it was poised to be our next leap forward. I can't blame some bunnies for acting like it was science-fiction. If you've been working in fields your whole life, the idea of farming without soil would be tough to wrap your head around. The truth was that it'd been around since the late thirties. It didn't really gain momentum till the sixties, but by the mid-eighties it was ready to make history. Imagine being able to cultivate six fields of vegetables, all stacked on top of one another. Six farms in the footprint of one.

St. Claire was outfitted with next-generation hydroponic facilities. We had over two-hundred-thousand square feet and we were going to use it to turn farming into a three-dimensional industry. We had only just started operations a few weeks earlier. I was already moved in but – thank the gods – my family was still back in Bunnyburrow. My wife had insisted that our children be allowed to finish the school year before they all joined me.

 **What can you tell me about experiencing the collapse?**

Right to it, then? I suppose that's fair enough.

I was in the main hydroponics lab on Level 23, along with two other engineers – Colin and Grant – and our lab technician, Wilbur. We had a number of ongoing projects and wanted to get an early start that morning. It was just a hair past eight o'clock when the main foundations buckled and dropped the entire structure by about 4 feet. That may not sound like much, but it was enough to cut off most of the passages in and out of St. Claire.

It wasn't like you'd imagine. Things didn't go flying off the tables and no one was sent sprawling to the ground. It felt sort of like being in an express elevator, when the descent starts and you get that odd lifting feeling in your gut for a second. We didn't even realize something was wrong until a few minutes later, when our lab tech noticed that the water pressure had dropped to zero.

We weren't too concerned; not yet, anyway. The lights were still on and the climate control vents were still humming away. There were a dozen different reasons that the pressure could have dropped off, and we assumed that someone had just closed a valve somewhere and forgotten to report it. St. Claire was still pretty new at that point, and permanent residents had only started moving in three or four months earlier. The maintenance and operations teams were still in their shakedown period, and little hiccups like that were common as they got a feel for how the burrow's systems reacted to a growing population.

The tech who'd discovered the problem, Wilbur, tried to call Water Control. All he got was a loud error tone; dialing the main Operations Center or even the Floor Manager's office had the same result. That was when he tried the emergency line. The bright red phone was bolted to the wall next to the fire alarm and was supposed to be a direct hardline directly to the burrow's Emergency Services dispatch. I'll never forget the shock on Wilbur's face when he picked it up and discovered that the line was dead.

Now we were getting worried. I decided to walk over to the Floor Manager's office myself and see if I could find out what was going on. That was when I discovered that the door was jammed. There didn't look to be anything wrong with it, but the frame had warped just enough that none of us could get it to budge. When I pressed my ear against it, I could faintly make out the voices of bunnies in other rooms; they were pounding on their own doors, obviously in the same situation as we were.

At this point, it'd been about twenty minutes since the water pressure had died. Putting our heads together, we tried to figure out what was going on. The hydroponics farm accounted for the largest percentage of water passing through the colony, and as such we had a direct line that ran through the main pumps. Our water throughput was kept at a carefully controlled flow rate, and the fact that the flow rate had stopped altogether meant one of two things; that there was no power going to the pumps, or that the pumps themselves weren't operational. Either of these was grounds for a full evacuation.

 **Why is that?**

Water may be a necessity of life, my boy, but it's still the biggest threat to any burrow. You can have the best tunneling system in the world, but you'll always find that it's vulnerable to water. Underground springs, the water table, hell even just water seeping down through the rocks above after it rains. The first two things you install in a burrow is a ventilation system and a water control system. The first so that you can breathe and the second so that you don't drown.

St. Claire's system were absolutely cutting edge. They were not only designed to manage the intake and output of every colony resident, but in an emergency, they could operate at twice that amount for up to a week. There were multiple redundant control systems. The pumps were built to withstand anything up to a magnitude 6 earthquake. It was supposed to be, for all intents and purposes, foolproof. Capable of enduring every scenario the designers could imagine.

 **Then what went wrong?**

What those designers had never imagined, naturally. A massive influx of external water; far more that our much-vaunted water control systems were ever intended to handle. As advanced as they were, the pumps just weren't up to the task and got overrun. That's why there was no pressure in the lines, why there was zero flow in hydroponics, and – as we would later learn– why there was rising water in the tunnels.

It was a little after eight-thirty when the power failed. The twin reactors that provided St. Claire's power were scaled-down versions of the ones that power that climate wall you have back in the city, and they took up the third, fourth and fifth levels from the bottom. The only thing below them was water control, and after that shut down the reactors were submerged within minutes. It's a testament to their design that they continued to generate electricity for another half-hour before the failed and the lights went dark.

We had an emergency kit in the lab, but it only had one flashlight in it. We didn't have those fancy phones that everybody carries around today with the flashlights on the back. We tried not to use it unless we had to, but still turned it on every few minutes just to reassure ourselves,

 **What about the air ventilation?**

Lucky for us, that was a separate system, based on the surface and independently powered. The sound of those fans was probably what kept us from going off the rails entirely as we sat there in the dark. I couldn't even see my own watch, so I couldn't tell you how long it was before we started hearing other sounds from beneath us. They were infrequent at first, and that made it difficult to determine what they were. Each one lasted about ten seconds and occurred every hour or so – at least, that was by Colin's count. He'd had one of those fancy glowing watches.

I remember that Wilbur thought it might be someone trying to fire up the reactors again, but Colin shut that down in a hurry. He was our electrical engineer and was quick to say that if the fusion reactors were making noises that we could hear one-hundred-and-seventy-five levels away, then we had much bigger problems than not having any lights.

It wasn't long after that our team's structural engineer, Grant, started muttering about how the rumbling sounds were getting louder. He was sitting right beside me at the time, and I told him to shut his mouth. We were already on edge, and I didn't need him scaring everyone more than they already were. Even so, he'd start up again after each rumble, and I'd tell him to shut up again. We kept that up for a while, developing an almost comforting pattern, when the next rumble was accompanied by a slight tremor in the floor and Grant went stiff as a board. He sat rigidly for almost forty minutes when there was another rumble – at this point I realized they really _were_ getting louder – followed by another, slightly stronger, tremor.

Grant let out the most terrified scream I've ever heard, scrambling to his feet and bolting for the door. I turned the flashlight on to find him pounding on the metal with all his strength, crying 'It's coming down!' over and over, and suddenly I understood.

 **Understood?**

I might not have been a _structural_ engineer like Grant, but I was still an engineer. No water pressure meant no pumps, no pumps meant that water couldn't leave the burrow, and rising water would have explained why there was no power; the reactors had drowned. That was when I remembered the sudden dropping sensation right before the water pressure died.

If whatever had shut down the water control infrastructure had somehow affected the burrow's superstructure, then every drop of rising water was going to chew away at each level's support chassis. Eventually the strain would be too much, and the level would be fatally compromised. That was the sound we'd been listening to for hours and hours. The sound we hadn't quite been able to identify, and that had now driven a structural engineer nearly mad with terror. Each rumble had been a level of St. Claire caving in on itself, one after another, gradually coming up to meet us.

I only had to look at Colin to see he'd come to the same conclusion.

 **What did you do?**

What any sensible hydrodynamic engineer would do; I panicked and started banging away at the door right next to Grant. We probably would have kept it up until our paws broke if Colin hadn't slapped some sense into us. He told us that losing our heads wasn't going to solve anything, and the best thing to do was to sit and wait for help.

We gave up on turning the flashlight off after that. We just left it on until the batteries died a few hours later. We were supposed to have backup batteries, but we couldn't find them. From that point on, there was only darkness. You can't even imagine what it was like, huddled in the black, praying for a sound from above and hearing the floors beneath us crumble one-by-one. Each time, the sound of crumbling concrete and rending steel was just a little louder.

It reached the point where I was certain I could hear the screams that accompanied the loss of each level when the jammed door burst open and I saw the most beautiful sight of my life – the bright orange uniforms of Tri-Burrow Search and Rescue. They didn't even give us time to thank them before they were hauling us out of the chamber and into the main causeway, telling us to make for the surface as quickly as we could. Colin refused, insisting that if they were going deeper into St. Claire, he was going with them. I still remember the determined look on his face in the dim light of the lamps as he pointed uphill and told us to run. I never saw my friend Colin again.

The main causeway – the enormous tunnel that coiled its way through St. Claire from the surface to the bottom – was intact but dangerously unstable. I was running like hell for the surface, and I swear I could see daylight when that place took one last swipe at me; a twenty-pound chunk of falling concrete hit me at just the right spot, right between the L-1 and L-2 vertebrae. That's all it took. I hadn't felt a thing. **[He gestures to the wheelchair that he's been confined to for the last three decades.]** And I never would again.

Grant and Wilbur grabbed hold of me, carried me the rest of the way. I barely remember anything after that, at least until I woke up in a triage tent and one of the nurses broke the bad news. They needed the bed, so they transferred me to a hospital in Acrewood. They couldn't spare any wheelchairs or stretchers, so they rolled me to the evacuation train in a wheelbarrow.

 **What did you do afterward?**

I thought about leaving town - Wilbur moved out to the coast and Grant took a teaching position in Zootopia – but I didn't feel like I had anywhere to go. I probably could have gone back into farming, but the fields aren't really made for wheelchairs and hydroponics – any water-based tech, really – just brought back ugly memories. So, I just sat at home, watching television and blaming everyone in sight. There was plenty of blame to go around back them. The architects blamed the surveyors, the surveyors blamed the builders, the builders blamed the material suppliers and the families blamed the whole damn lot of them...it just went around and round.

Then one day, about six months after the collapse, one of my younger kids asked me why I had wheels. **[He chuckles]** It was a fair question, I suppose. I told him I'd been in an accident, and he wanted to know what kind. I told him it was a cave-in, and he wanted to know where. You know how kids are; curious little things. Well, it didn't take long for me to reach the end of my answers. Not only was his curiosity far from satisfied, but I was realizing how little I really knew about the accident that had crippled me. Since I had nothing else to do, I grabbed a pen and some paper, wrote down all of his questions, and I promised him I'd find out the answers.

Now, here's a piece of wisdom from an old rabbit; three of the most important things you need in life are a destination, a reason to go and the means to get there. I might not have been able to change what happened, but I could figure out why it happened. I knew I'd need help, so I called up the son of an old friend. He was a defense attorney in town. He'd been a real hotshot, but the sheer weight of all the lawsuits he'd been fighting off had driven the poor mammal to drink. I said to him, 'Barney, I need to do something, but I need your help to do it.'

 **How did he respond?**

The hell if I know. The damned fool was too drunk to string more than a few curses together. I wasn't put off, though. I'd dealt with drunk farmhands and drunk teenagers; I could handle a drunk lawyer.

I got my daughter to drive me into town and right up to that fancy-looking office of his. Turns out the shyster didn't have a ramp, so she decided to handle things herself. She marched right in there, grabbed that foul-mouthed lush by the ear, hauled him outside and dunked his head in a rain-barrel till he was sober enough to talk. Can't say as I was surprised, though. That one's always been a firebrand.

 **Which daughter was this? [Otto has nearly a dozen.]**

My oldest, Bonnie. She's a good girl, takes after her mother. **[He grins.]** Between you and me, her own daughter is every bit as headstrong.

 **Which granddaughter is that?**

Son, the Hopps family is one of the largest rabbit families in history. I have a couple hundred grandchildren spread around the world and I love 'em all to pieces, but do you really expect me to remember all of their names? **[He leans closer and lowers his voice.]** It's Judy, though. The doe who showed you in? Real firecracker. I'm so damned proud of that girl, I could just burst.

 **[He leans back, clears his throat, and coughs loudly into his handkerchief.]** Excuse me. Now, where was I?

 **Your daughter had just finished trying to drown a lawyer in a rain barrel.**

Right! So, we got Barney more or less sobered up, dragged him to the diner, got some real food in him, and I told him what I needed. You see, up to that point, there hadn't been a real investigation into St. Claire. Sure, there'd been some trials and the occasional news exposé, but no one was really digging into the heart of it. Lawsuits were being filed, but everyone was too focused on _who_ they were blaming rather than _what_ they were blaming them for.

At one point, he downs a whole cup of black-tar coffee in one gulp, looks me in the eye, and say 'So what the hell do you want from me, Hopps?'

In short, I told him I was going to go pick a fight, that I needed him on my side, and that between the two of us we might be able to give all those grieving mammals some closure. Six coffees and four plates of fried carrots later, we already had a plan of attack.

 **That was how the Hopps/Westfield Report was written?**

No, that didn't come till later. In the beginning, it was just two angry rabbits with a room full of structural plans, geological surveys, topographical studies, engineering papers, post-incident reports, and a three-foot stack of blank Freedom of Information request forms. Gods above, I don't know how many times I read through all those reports and studies, to say nothing of the ones compiled since. I guess as much as I was searching for answers, I was searching for some closure of my own. As if understanding what happened would make it easier to cope with.

 **What did you find?**

In short, a perfect goddamn storm of miscommunication, uncertainty, and short-sightedness.

We investigated a dozen potential sources for the water that drowned St. Claire, and how it had so quickly overwhelmed the systems meant to control it. In the end, we determined that the source was spillover from the Willow Valley hydroelectric dam. Although St. Claire's designers had coordinated with the beavers operating the dam, things were a little different back then. Interspecies relations weren't quite as strong, and obviously some critical information wasn't communicated. Hell, it took Barney and I over a month to even get ahold of the dam's operations logs.

We learned that the autumn rains that year had far exceeded expectations. That's not so good if you're a farmer, but downright dangerous if you're a dam-operator. By mid-November, they were already expecting the emergency spillway to come into effect, and in the early evening of November 22nd it did just that.

The excess water was released into the Willow Valley river. That should have been the end of it, except when the dam had been built the banks of that river had been higher and stronger. Decades of farming had reduced them to softer soil, and there were even some artificial wetlands for growing rice or cranberries. No one had worried about it, because until that day the river had been a gentle, slow-moving strip of water.

By the late evening the river had begun to overflow its banks. Hundreds of rabbits saw it happen, but no one knew who to contact about it. A few called the Sheriff's office, but the deputies working that night didn't have any idea how to respond. The banks finally broke around four in the morning. St. Claire's seismic sensors picked it up, but since it was so spread out the technician reported it to the Tri-Burrows Emergency Management Office as a system error. There were thousands of tons of water flowing downhill toward the burrow, and no one inside knew about it.

St. Claire's steel foundations had been drilled into solid granite bedrock, and there were nearly two-hundred million tons resting on them. They were rated for more, but only in the form of direct overhead weight.

The burrow flood-control system was set up so that any significant water accumulation on the surface, whether it was rainwater or seasonal flooding or whatever, would be diverted to drainage pipes that ran along the outside of the structure. Those pipes would carry the water to the bottom of the burrow, where the pumps would do their job and send it off to the Pine Ridge river, just like the rest of the drainage water. When the overflow from the dam hit, the system did its job exactly as it was intended to. That was where it all went wrong.

St. Claire, like most burrows, was tapered; widest at the top, narrowest at the bottom. If you need a visual, imagine a beehive. However, when designing an underground structure, the idea of it being top-heavy doesn't really come to mind. When the flood-control system was designed, it assumed that the water would be more-or-less evenly distributed. In this case, it all hit on one side.

The drainage pipes filled up, but rather than seeping into the burrow itself, the excess drained into holding tanks until the pipes were clear. That added thousands of tons to one side of the structure, shearing some of the supports on that side. Suddenly, all that weight was pressing into the foundations at an angle. Only about eight degrees, but it was enough to overwhelm them.

The rest, I'm sad to say, is history.

 **This situation hadn't been anticipated by the designers?**

Perhaps, although to be fair none of the dozens of surveys leading up to construction had reported any of the significant warning signs that Barney and I discovered.

When all was said and done, the problem came down to co-operation. Or rather, a lack thereof. Instead of a single design team, there were three different firms who under any other circumstances would have been competitors. Although no one can say for certain, there are strong indications that these companies allowed their competitors to make mistakes in order to make themselves look better later on.

The same could be said of the twenty-two construction companies that turned those designs into reality. Not only were they all competitors as well, but they were made up of all manner of species and those species didn't always get along.

I suppose fate dealt with them all in the end. Every single construction company were involved in St. Claire ended up going out of business. Seventeen of them drowned in lawsuits, and the remaining five struggled on for a short while before they were put out of business by the HPA.

 **HPA?**

The Housing Protection Act. Exactly the kind of reactionary garbage that politicians use to get votes. It was a law that said private construction companies couldn't build any burrow that would hold more than 15 rabbits. I'm sure it played well in the campaign speeches, but it came with a very large and extremely predictable flaw; larger burrows still needed to be built, but now nobody could hire any of the companies that were actually equipped to do so.

Barney and I realized we had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and _that_ was when we put together the Hopps/Westfield Report. We compiled all of the data we'd uncovered and lay out all of the conclusions we'd come to. We consulted with dozens of specialists working in the same area. Finally, we outlined our proposal on how to prevent it from ever happening again.

We didn't expect to make much of a splash when we published that report. We expected a nod from the Tri-Burrows government, and if we were lucky they might implement a few of our more approachable suggestions. We were utterly stunned when they decided to go forward with our core solution; the creation of a unified federal department that would be responsible for all major burrow, den, and warren construction.

A little more than six months after the report was published, the Subterranean Habitat Engineering Corps officially commenced operations. It didn't take long for folks to get tired of that mouthful of a name, though, and pretty soon they were just being call the Burrowers.

A lot of the bunnies in my generation wanted it to be a bunnies-only operation. Homes built _for_ rabbits _by_ rabbits and all that. Barney and I had been very specific on that point, though. It didn't matter what we thought of another species personally, the fact was that poor interspecies cooperation is what killed St. Claire. If we were really going to learn from our mistakes, we had to put our bias behind us.

Then again, who am I to talk about interspecies tolerance? I once told a fox, right to his face, that his fur was red because he was made by the devil. That rascal just smiled and asked if my long ears meant I was made by a jackass. **[He begins to laugh, but it is overtaken by another coughing fit.]** Excuse me.

In any case, those older bunnies got shouted down and today the Burrowers employ thousands of trained personnel across dozens of species. From engineers and architects, to cave divers and every kind of tradesmammal.

 **What do you think about your children and grandchildren who chose to join the Burrowers?**

Proud of 'em, every single one. Just like I'm proud of all the ones who went to college. When I went to college to study engineering instead of agriculture, it made me the black sheep of the family...so to speak. Now I get to watch an entire generation proudly do the same thing. Heck, I have grandkids who've gone to school for all sorts of things. Never thought I'd see the day when a Hopps could prosper with a Fine Arts degree.

 **[His laughter is once again overtaken by coughing, and the handkerchief he places over his mouth comes away spotted with blood.]** Excuse me. It must be dusty in here.

 **How does it feel, being one of the relatively few survivors left?**

I'm afraid I don't have a solid answer for you on that one. It varies from day to day.

Sometimes, I'd give damn near anything to be able to get out of this damned chair or take a deep breath without hacking up blood. It feels like I was robbed of a better version of my own life. Other days, when I watch the younger generations thriving and growing and taking their place in the world, I find I'm so filled with hope I could just burst.

Maybe that's your answer, then. Maybe any rabbit with a family has something to live for.


	3. Pt 2 - Tooth and Claw

**The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective  
Part 2: Tooth and Claw**  
 _by Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 **ooooo**

 **"** **I could go to prison or risk being buried alive. Can you believe I almost chose prison?"  
** Nicholas Wilde - Fox  
Pathfinder

 **ooooo**

 **Nicholas Wilde looks very little like the lean, scowling fox in his old black & white mugshot. Rather, the mammal walking beside me is strongly-built with a warm, easy smile. The former Zootopian native is now a permanent resident of Bunnyburrow. Although there is nothing preventing him from going back to his former home in the city, he is adamant that he will never return.**

 **We walk through the fields surrounding Bunnyburrow, visible in the distance as a tiny cluster of buildings, and he occasionally pauses to enjoy the sun's warmth.**

Have you ever been to Happytown? In South Savanna Central?

 **I haven't.**

That's probably for the best. It's a terrible neighborhood these days, but when I was a kid my dad ran a reasonably successful tailor shop there. Mammals from all over Zootopia would come to his shop to have work done and everyone in our neighborhood respected him. No small achievement, especially for a fox. He was just the kind of mammal you couldn't help but like. I remember when a customer said he was surprised to see a fox using those nimble paws for something better than petty theft. Dad just smiled and reminded him that he hadn't seen the bill yet.

But sometimes life can be cruel, even to a mammal who doesn't deserve it. Rheumatoid arthritis isn't a fatal disease, but if your livelihood depends on having steady paws then it can sure be a life-ending one. It was manageable for a time, but eventually his condition started to show in his work. A loose button here, a crooked stitch there. Before long, mammals started to take their business elsewhere.

As the pain got worse, he needed more and more medication to steady his paws and keep working. We had health insurance, but foxes don't have the best immune system to start with and the premiums for our species are pretty nasty. It wasn't long before he and Mom just couldn't afford it anymore and we had to cancel. Not that it really mattered, because some speciest jackass at Zootopia General ended up flagging him as a drug-seeker, and after that he couldn't get a doctor to write him a prescription. **[He rolls his eyes]** You gotta love that old "shifty fox" reputation. Eventually, he just had to sell the shop.

 **What did he do after that?**

He did what any good mammal would to support his family and took whatever legitimate work he could find. Mostly labor jobs, carrying boxes and digging holes; the kind of thing that doesn't require a lot of precision. **[He shrugs.]** It worked out okay for a while, but eventually his grip strength gave out and even those jobs weren't an option anymore. It's not easy to find work out there that doesn't involve using your hands. I was just a kit. I didn't understand what was going on. I just know that Mom and Dad were sad, that they argued more than they used to.

They were hard workers, though, and more importantly they were resourceful. Eventually Dad got a part-time job at the community center, teaching sewing classes to seniors. Half of them had arthritis themselves, so they were very sympathetic. Life went on and things were actually pretty good - right up until the Junior Ranger Scouts, at least.

 **Junior Ranger Scouts?**

I had a bad experience with some bullies in a Junior Ranger Scout troop I tried to join. Before that, I hadn't really known that bigotry was a thing. The idea that someone might be mean to me just because I was a fox hadn't even occurred to me. I came home in tears that night and told my parents what had happened. They hugged me and comforted me, said all the right words, but it felt like something inside me was broken.

Suddenly I was seeing every comment against me, real or imaginary, as a speciest remark. I'd tried so hard to make friends and fit in, harder than I'd ever tried at anything, and it'd turned around and bit me. When I imagined trying that hard for the rest of my life for the same result, I just got so _angry_. **[He pauses.]** I kept it to myself, both for Mom and Dad's sake, and because I refused be as exposed as I'd been at that Ranger Scouts meeting. Come hell or high water, I was never going to give anyone the satisfaction of doing that to me again.

I made it through the rest of school okay, all the while pulling little scams and hustles behind the scenes. Shell games on the schoolyard, selling quiz answers, and other stuff like that. The funny thing was that if I got caught, teachers would just shrug and blame it on me being a fox. 'He can't help it, poor thing.' they'd say, and usually wouldn't even bother calling Mom and Dad because they assumed that my parents – being foxes – wouldn't care. That suited me fine. I'd figured that if the world was only ever going to see foxes as shifty and untrustworthy, there was no reason I couldn't work that to my advantage.

 **That's an interesting perspective.**

I'm not sure if you know what life is like for foxes in Zootopia, but I can assure you that it isn't pleasant. Granted, it wasn't as bad when I was younger, but it was still no walk in the park. I was satisfied taking my wins where I could get them.

Anyway, it wasn't long after I finished high school that I started dipping my paws into slightly more lucrative ventures. I did my best to stay on the legal side of things, but my parents were gone by then so there really wasn't anyone around to keep me on the relatively straight and narrow.

 **I'm sorry.**

Huh? **[He laughs.]** Oh, no! I mean my parents had moved away from the city. I'd managed to scrape together enough money so that, combined with their savings, they could afford to move down to Cape Caracal. The warmth down there is way easier on my dad's paws.

I, however, stayed in the city and continued to act like an idiot; skimming just on the edge of illegality.

 **Is that what led you being sent out to the Tri-Burrows?**

That would be a perfect blend of good luck and poor life choices.

It was around the same time that all those savage cases started cropping up. It was all over the papers, but you probably know all about that. I didn't pay much attention to the news, and none of it affected me personally until just after the mayor went to prison for kidnapping and that ewe, Bellwether, took over. Talk about a wolf in sheep's clothing. It only took about six months for her to convince the city council to remove all the predators from the police force. Then it was all the emergency services, hospitals, schools, then finally the few predators who were actually _on_ the city council got removed from office. That was when things really started to get bad.

Up until then, I was just a pawpsicle hustler...

 **I'm sorry...a pawpsicle hustler?**

Yup. Me and my partner would buy one of those Jumbo-Pops, melt it down, refreeze the syrup into little paw-sized versions and sell them at a mark-up. Technically legal but ethically dubious, I guess.

Anyway, after Bellwether took over it got more and more dangerous for any predator to be seen skirting the edge of legality. I tried to stay low-key, but I had bills to pay and there isn't a lot of honest work for foxes. I ended up getting involved with the wrong mammals, the kind who didn't stop at _almost_ breaking the law. I won't bore you with the details, but the short version is that it didn't take long for me to end up in pawcuffs.

I know how my story should have played out from there. I should've been sent away for what would have undoubtedly been the first of several trips to prison. A fox may have trouble finding work, but a fox who'd done prison time? Forget it. I'd seen the same story play out with foxes I'd known growing up; it didn't have a happy ending. That's why it blew my mind when the judge gave me a choice; I could either spend eight years in a federal penitentiary, or three years working with the Burrowers.

Seemed like an easy choice to me.

 **Why is that?**

I wish I could say that it was courage, or selflessness, or the desire to serve my fellow mammal. In all honesty, I was just lazy. I thought 'Hey, they're just little bunnies. How hard could it be?' Famous last words, right?

It turned out that I wasn't the only one who chose digging a hole over doing time. There were about fifteen of us when they bustled us onto a train bound for Bunnyburrow. I still hadn't taken the time to actually consider what I was doing, other than avoiding jail time, that is. It didn't really sink in until we left the city. I remember looking out at the rolling hills and thinking that I'd never even imagined so much empty space in my life, let alone seen it in person. The theme continued once we reached our destination. We had plenty of elbow room there, too; most mammals wouldn't come anywhere near us. My fellow 'volunteers' and I were tough to miss in our bright orange ZDC* coveralls.

The first month was all training, and you'd better believe they didn't make it easy on us. It felt like we spent more time beneath the surface than above it, learning how to be part of a Burrower operation. Where to go and what to do when you get there, where _not_ to go and why not, 'I say jump you say how high' kind of stuff. A lot of the other trainees couldn't hack it. They actually _preferred_ the idea of prison, but I can't say as I blame them. A lot of them were way bigger than a bunny – wolves and even a couple of larger felines.

 **They allowed mammals that size to join?**

Sure. They'd accept anyone, as long as they fit in the tunnels. Burrowers started out as a rabbit-only operation, but eventually realized that bunnies weren't always the best choice. I've heard that bringing in predators rubbed a lot of the older bunnies the wrong way, but what could they really say? We were strong, we could see better in the dark, we could smell a natural gas pocket a mile away and claws are pretty handy for digging.

 **Even if they were convicted criminals?**

Yup, though they only accepted non-violent offenders. Plus, the work-release program basically amounted to slave labor.

 **I beg your pardon?**

 **[He chuckles.]** Okay, calling us slaves might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it's still closer to the truth than a lot of mammals are comfortable admitting.

We were paid four bucks a day, so we were technically employees. We had warm beds and three meals a day. On the other paw, we worked eleven-hour shifts, six days a week. We weren't allowed to move freely, got locked in our rooms at night, and we were never out of sight of a guard. They were all armed, and we were very specifically told that if one of us had tried to make a run for it... **[He mimics the sound of a gunshot.]**

We were never treated with cruelty, but they never let us forget that we were prisoners.

 **What kind of work did they have you doing?**

We all started out as Diggers, just like everyone does. For the most part, you don't need a lot of brainpower to pick up a shovel and dig a hole. After a few weeks, they started pulling those who showed a glimmer of intelligence off digger duty and into more specialized fields. Clearly someone recognized my glowing potential, because I got moved over to communications. Radios don't transmit very far down there; too much rock for the signal to go through. That was why all communications relied on these radio re-broadcast units. They'd pick up a signal from a Burrower's handset, clean up the message, then rebroadcast it to the next unit, and so on. As the burrow expanded they needed mammals to place and maintain more of those units.

It wasn't the most exciting job, but it beat working a shovel and kept me occupied for a few months. The only real downside was that I got paired up with this sullen-looking possum who had a problem with being paired up with a convict. **[He shrugs.]** Not that it mattered, really. Everyone has a partner down there, and you stick to them like a bad habit.

We were on our way down to check the RRB units at the bottom level when one little incident changed my life forever. The tram gave an unexpected shudder, bumping us around in our seats. It was probably just some gravel on the track, but it was enough of a bump to dislodge my duffel bag and send it slipping off the back of the tram car. It was like I was watching it happen in slow-motion. There were twenty-five RRBs in there, and if you broke or lost one they'd take its value out of your wages. I'd have been paying that debt off for the rest of my sentence, and still owe them money after I was released.

I got to enjoy a few seconds of relief when the bag landed on a soft sandy patch rather than on solid rock, but that dried up when it inexplicably slid out of sight. I figured that there had to be a hidden opening or some kind of alcove there. Something relatively easy to get into and retrieve the bag from.

That was all I was thinking about when I jumped off the tram. By the time I realized that the guards were shouting at me to stop, I was already on my belly and shimmying into the opening the bag had slipped through. I figured it couldn't have been more than a few feet deep, but before I knew it the opening was ten or fifteen feet behind me and I was still going. The sandy grade wasn't very steep, enough to keep me moving but not so much as I wasn't able to control my descent, and I probably went about thirty feet before it leveled out.

The RRB bag was sitting right there, as though it'd been waiting for me and without so much as a scratch on it. I took a second to make sure nothing was damaged, shouted up to the guards that I'd slipped and needed a rope to get out, then sat down to wait. I probably managed about three minutes of that before my curiosity got the better of me and I started looking around.

The slope I'd come in on might've been a tight squeeze, but the chamber I landed in was anything but. To this day, I have no idea how the surveyors missed it. It had to have been about eight-hundred square feet, at least. To make matters worse, it's position meant it was sitting right under a lower part of the causeway. That was a cave in waiting to happen.

I made the guards pull the RRBs up first, so I could catch them if they fell, and when they finally got _me_ back up you'd better believe I got an earful for running off. That didn't stop me from flagging down the first Foreman I saw and giving him a heads up about the cave I found. I couldn't figure out why he looked so stunned when I started rattling off the things I'd seen - cavern size, and shape, structure, rock composition, layout. I guess no one told him about my less-than-legal exploits, because the first rule of hustling is that the devil is in the details; observing and analyzing my surroundings had been second-nature to me for years.

Once he shook off his surprise, he notified the teams down-tunnel and got everyone pulled out. I found out later that if the diggers had gone another ten feet, the tunnel probably would've collapsed out from under them. All I got at the time was a gruff 'good job' and orders to get back to work.

A couple of days later, I was just getting ready to go down and do my rounds when this fruit bat comes flapping out of nowhere and lands practically on top of me. If you've never seen one, a fruit bat looks a little bit like a fox. Specifically, a fox with much larger eyes from your darkest nightmares. Don't get me wrong. Pierre – that was the fruit bat – is a good friend, but that doesn't mean I enjoy having his six feet of leathery demon wings flapping in my face.

Anyway, once my heartrate had returned to normal, he asks if I'm the fox who found the cavern. Sure am, says I.

Did I know there was a cave there when I jumped off the tram, or did I just get lucky? I said I knew _something_ was there, and the answer seemed to satisfy him.

Was I the play-it-safe type, or was I willing to take risks? I reminded him that play-it-safe mammals rarely end up in prison uniforms. That got a laugh out of him.

Then he asked if I enjoyed working with communications gear, or if I'd rather do something far more dangerous for longer hours and exactly zero extra pay. I was honestly about to laugh in his face when he mentioned that the danger could shave as much as a year off of my sentence.

Long story short, that was how I ended up in the Pathfinders.

 **Pathfinders?**

Subterranean Reconnaissance Specialists, if you want to get technical. Everyone just calls them Pathfinders. Burrowers are big into nicknames. I can respect that.

Sometimes a tunneling crew would break through into an underground cavern or an abandoned burrow that wasn't on the survey maps. If that happened, Pathfinders went in to conduct a survey and see if it was safe to continue forward. Sometimes it would be a fifteen-minute sneak and peek. Other times it could be an extended operation. The closer you get to the Redwall Mountains, the more natural cave systems there are. Sometimes you and your partner could be out there for days. That's a hell of a thing to try and prepare a mammal for.

I thought my initial training had been tough, but it was a walk in the park compared to Pathfinder training. They had a wash-out rate of nearly eighty-five percent. If two out of every ten candidates actually finished training, that was _above_ average.

 **You must have done exceptionally well.**

I prefer to think I was exceptionally motivated.

Most mammals didn't think much of foxes. Even after they'd long-since stopped checking the other convicts, I still got twice-daily pat-downs to make sure I wasn't stealing anything. I mean, really? Even if I had been stealing anything, what the hell would I have done with it? I actually asked the guard patting me down one day. He said it was procedure, but I heard a bunny nearby mutter something about biology. Can you believe that?! As if I was biologically _compelled_ to steal, regardless of whether I needed to or not! **[He takes a deep breath.]** Sorry. Years later, and it still gets me kind of riled up to think about it.

Anyway, I felt like this was an opportunity to prove I wasn't some shifty crook. To show them that I could be trusted with something that really _mattered_.

 **What was the training program itself like?**

The course was broken up into three parts. We all started out together for two months of basic conditioning, then broke apart for a month of specialty training, then whoever was left got sorted into small teams for a month of practical training.

The first thing I remember from the first day of training is the adorably excited bunny standing in the center of the room. Well, I say standing, but _bouncing_ is probably a more accurate description.

 **Was that Judy Hopps?**

The one and only.

The entire basic conditioning phase was _brutal_. We'd get up in the morning, rappel down a rock wall, do wind-sprints at the bottom till we were ready to throw up, then it was back up the wall. Down, burpees, back up. Down, strap a forty-pound sack into a rescue rig, clip it to your harness, back up. _Then_ they let us have breakfast.

They'd get us to crawl on our bellies for a mile. They trained us to hold our breath for up to six minutes; eight if we weren't moving. They'd put a mammal with good night vision, like me, in a dark room with someone who could barely see. We'd have a set amount of time to solve a jigsaw puzzle together, but I wasn't allowed to touch the pieces _or_ whoever I was paired with. It sounds simple enough, but I'd usually want to tear my fur out with frustration after five minutes. It's so easy to lose your temper when you're that exhausted.

Once, the lead instructor piled us all into a classroom and told us to write a thousand-word essay on gravel. I'm not kidding; he wanted a thousand words about _gravel_. Then he dimmed the lights and cranked the heat up. Anyone who fell asleep had to do twenty pushups and got a hundred words added to their total. Not only was it ridiculous, but it was totally unoriginal. I _swear_ I saw it in a movie somewhere.

I remember looking a couple of rows ahead of me, to see Judy powering through her essay. I swear it was like she was plugged into a battery. Her writing was infuriatingly neat, while mine would occasionally stray off into squiggly lines whenever my brain decided to doze off. It was around the point where she started adding diagrams that I got really annoyed. Every minute or so, I'd lightly drag my claws over the metal surface of my table. It wasn't loud enough for most of the mammals in the room, but to a bunny it might as well have been claws on a chalkboard. I'd keep it up until I saw her ears begin to twitch in annoyance, then stop and stare at my paper while she glanced around for the culprit. Eventually she caught me and hit me with one hell of a glare, at least until the instructor loudly added three hundred words to her essay and told her to keep her head down.

She cornered me later that day, when we finally got a break. It wasn't a very polite conversation; she accused me of trying to make her fail, I assured her she could manage that all on her own. She implied I'd made it into Pathfinder training by cheating, I outright called her a token bunny. She condescendingly called me 'surprisingly articulate for a fox', and I saddled her with her nickname, Carrots. I can't tell you how satisfying it was when that name stuck.

From there, we fell into a comfortable pattern of mutual antagonism. It probably would have kept going for the entire course if we hadn't been sent to different specialization schools.

 **Why did it change?**

When I stuck my foot in my mouth in a truly spectacular fashion. I rather not get into all the gory details. The short version is that a couple of days before we all got split up for specialist training, I decided to act like a snarky smartass at _exactly_ the wrong moment. I didn't know that she'd just lost a grandparent and I went and made some glib remark about overly emotional bunnies. And it had been her mother's mother, of all things. **[He shakes his head.]**

 **Is that significant?**

When I called her overly emotional, it was like saying she, her mother, her grandmother, and every other mother in her line wasn't worth mourning.

 **I see.**

You probably don't, but that's okay; it's a fox thing.

Forty-eight hours later, I was on a bus up to Black Rock to train with Tri-Burrow Search & Rescue. I'd be learning how to set up rappel anchors, traverses, zip lines, that kind of thing. I got pretty good at reading the rocks; seeing where it was safe to anchor or what handholds were best. I even got an abridged version of their emergency medical training. That meant that my partner would be the geeky half of our team. Most teams were set up that way. You'd have one practically-oriented mammal and one scientifically-oriented mammal.

Specialist training also gave me an opportunity to think about some things. Carrots and I weren't that different, really. We were both seen only as species stereotypes, and both looking for a way to prove we were anything but. The irony was that we'd even done it to one another; I'd assumed she was just another dumb, overeager bunny. She'd only seen a shifty, scheming fox.

After that I decided to lay off. When we all came back for our last month of training, the first thing I did was apologize to her and offered her a small gift to make amends for the insult. I convinced one of the Corrections Officers to go into town and pay for it with some money from my work-release pay account. I was certain she'd be suspicious of that, but she accepted that I was on the level and accepted my apology. It turned out that when we weren't constantly sniping at one another, we actually had a lot in common.

She and I were on different teams for the practical training phase, but we still saw each other at meals or during any course-side training. We started out with small talk, but I don't think anyone was as surprised as we were when the two of us ended up becoming really good friends. That last month rocketed by, and it seemed like no time at all before we were standing on a stage and being presented with our Pathfinder patches. That was kind of a weird experience.

 **How so?**

It may seem strange to you, but I'd never felt respected before. Liked, admired, envied...but never respected. Standing on that stage, I was getting smiles and nods of respect from mammals who wouldn't have given me the time of day before. Mammals who'd sneered at me - including more than a few bunnies – took one look at that Pathfinder patch on my shoulder and their attitudes flipped like a switch. That'd be amazing for anyone. For a fox in a prison uniform, it was unbelievable.

After graduation, everyone went into town to celebrate. And by that, I mean that everyone _else_ went into town and I went back to my room. I was just nodding off when I heard a tap on my window. It sounds strange, but I was somehow shocked and at the same time completely unsurprised to find Carrots standing outside. The windows in our bunkhouse were heavily reinforced, but they could still open a couple of inches to let in a little fresh air.

I asked her what she was doing there, and she told me that I deserved a drink just as much as the rest of them. The bunny-sized cider bottle looked ridiculously small in my paw, but that didn't keep me from savoring every last drop.

As I was enjoying the first drink I'd had in nearly a year, she sat on the ground, leaned against the wall and began speaking softly. She told me all about her dream of becoming a cop, and how hard it was on her when it didn't work out. I told her about my unfortunate descent into a life of crime. It was already sunrise when she left, telling me she'd see me in a couple of hours.

They'd told us all to report to the training centre, so we could meet our new partners. I admit I was excited to see who'd they'd decided to pair me with. This was going to be the mammal I'd trust with my life - and who'd trust me with theirs - in one of the least hospitable environments on the planet. There were a few of the other trainees that I'd gotten along with pretty well, and I certainly knew who I was _hoping_ for, but I'd have considered myself lucky to just have a partner I got along with.

 **[He grins widely.]** Turns out that good luck isn't exclusive to rabbits.

~o~o~o~

 *** ZDC - Zootopia Department of Corrections**


	4. Pt 3 - Flesh and Stone

**The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective  
Part 3: Flesh and Stone  
** _by Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 _[This interview contains some language that may be inappropriate for younger readers. – ed.]_

 **ooooo**

 **"** **There's an understanding among Burrowers that goes right back to the beginning of the organization. No one gets left behind."**

Anton McMeadow - Rabbit  
Burrow Engineer ( _Retired_ )

 **ooooo**

 **Looking at a scale model of the New Haven burrow, it is easy to see why it is being hailed as "The Home for a New Generation".**

 **The result of the first-ever joint design venture between rabbits, badgers, and foxes, a single glance at the blueprints is enough to highlight how different New Haven is from any burrow before it. Rather than being stacked one above another, the tunnels of each level will offset from the ones above and below. In addition, each level will be anchored by the sections above it. The result is a helix structure that is, according to both its designers and several third-party design inspectors, almost impossible to collapse.**

 **Combined with its reinforced center-column wells, hydroponic gardens, and spacious living areas, it's no wonder why its development has already resulted in a half-dozen construction contracts across the Tri-Burrows. Standing alongside me in their presentation room is the project's head consultant, Anton McMeadow.**

She's a hell of a thing, isn't she? **[He gestures to the model in front of us.]** Absolutely one-of-a-kind, and a complete departure from traditional burrow design.

 **I understand this is the Burrowers' first multi-species design collaboration?**

Damn right it is. I can't believe it took us this long, either. Nobody knows reinforced construction like badgers. Lightweight, modular structures that are the next best thing to bombproof. And the fox designers we brought in came up with some groundbreaking ideas.

 **Was there any resistance to the idea of working with foxes?**

No, we welcomed them with open arms and we all sang kumbaya round the fire. **[He rolls his eyes.]** We were bunnies and they were foxes; of course there was resistance. But the fact of the matter was that they knew their shit inside out. The self-reinforcing hexagon-passageways? That was all them. Same with the variable-geometry array of solar panels on the surface. As much as some bunnies might've pissed and moaned about it, those guys have been invaluable to the project, and not just as designers.

One of the fox architects, Raymond, once told me that there's this phrase where he's from - if you got nothing, use anything. See, foxes tend to get the short end of the stick when it comes to employment. Mammals think they're shifty, so they can't find work, so they don't have a lot of money, so they try to get the most bang for their buck by making deals and hunting out bargains. And goddamn did they ever make that work for us. I have never in my _life_ seen mammals who could stretch a buck so far. They'd find ways to source top-quality materials for half of what our suppliers were quoting. Every single project of theirs has come in on time, under budget, up to code, and one-hundred percent above board.

I tell ya, Bunnyburrow is a lot different these days than when I first moved here. Up until a couple years ago, there was only one fox family living in the entire county; now there's dozens of 'em.

 **You're not originally from Bunnyburrow?**

Nope. Born and raised out in Jackalope Falls, Warren County. Beautiful place, but not a lot of work to be had. That's why I left, a little over thirty years ago. I spent the first twenty-eight as a Burrower, and the last two and a bit as one of their engineering consultants.

I actually gave retirement a shot after Homestead. Thought I'd move back home, get myself a nice little cottage on the edge of town, and maybe relax for the first time in three decades. I tried to enjoy it, but all that sitting around just wasn't for me. I've been in the construction business my whole life, even before the Burrowers were even formed; I'm just not happy unless I'm getting my paws dirty.

Hell, I go back so far, I actually helped build St. Claire.

 **Oh...I didn't realize...I'm sorry.**

Cut that shit out, kid. I didn't design the damn thing. Every construction company in the region worked on St. Claire in some way or another. When the Burrowers started up, where do you think they got most of their personnel from?

I was just a young buck back then, working for Hareigan & Sons and installing drywall in some of the residential units. I didn't have anything to do with St. Claire's superstructure. Her collapse was in no way, shape, or form my fault; I'd done nothing at all to contribute to what happened and, more importantly, couldn't have done a thing to prevent it. None of that kept me from joining up with the Burrowers on day one. Most of their earliest recruits were mammals like me, looking for work after the Housing Protection Act took our jobs away.

 **The burrowers had work for a drywaller?**

 **[He laughs.]** Of course. It's not as though they just showed up, dug a hole, and called it a burrow; the actual excavation is only part of the job. You've also got the plumbers, electricians, framers, drywallers, painters, and everybody else who turned a hole into a home. Of course, just because they _hired_ me as a drywaller didn't mean I was content to _stay_ a drywaller. It's a decent job when you're in your early twenties; simple, repetitive, and it paid better than flipping burgers. But as a career? Absolute crap. No one should be forty-five years old and still hammering up drywall panels for fifteen bucks an hour.

I wanted more out of life than that, and when you're young and dumb, the best way to get that is start learning things. The 'young' part is gonna go away no matter what. Getting rid of the 'dumb' is up to you. If I saw another mammal doing a job I thought looked interesting, I'd start asking questions. If I liked what I heard, I'd start buggin' them to teach me how to do it, too. The Burrowers has this thing where you could only apprentice for one trade, but you could assist with as many as you wanted. Assistants didn't earn their trade ticket, didn't get paid any extra, couldn't join the union, weren't entitled to any overtime, and had to work under the supervision of a qualified tradesmammal. Most mammals avoided it like the plague, but they couldn't keep me away. I didn't need the fancy perks; I just wanted the know-how.

After a year I knew how to weld, run electrical lines, install plumbing, you name it. My only goal was to get to a place where I could start making a little more money. That's probably why it surprised me when my foreman, this salty old meerkat named Sal, asked what school I was trying to get into.

 **Was he referring to a trade school?**

That's what I thought, but it turned out that while I'd been hopping around and learning everything I could, he'd been under the assumption that I was angling for a scholarship.

 **Scholarship?**

Yup. If they thought you had the brains and the temperament for it, the Burrowers would send you to college to earn a degree. You just had to agree to work for them for five years after you'd finished. I didn't know any of that at the time, though. I just laughed it off and said I didn't have the grades for any scholarship. Then Sal cuffs me upside the head and tells me that's too freaking bad, because he'd already recommended me, and I wasn't about to make him look like an asshole.

From that day on, Sal would be on me like a goddamn tick anytime I'd start to slack off. If I wasn't doing my job, I was assisting a tradesmammal. When Friday came, he'd be right there with another goddamn book for me to read over the weekend. Then he'd quiz me on the fucking thing the whole next week. I finally got fed up with it, got right in his face and asked him what his problem was. You know what he says to me?

He says, 'My problem was that I was forty-five years old and still hammering up drywall panels for fifteen bucks an hour. Then someone came along about ten years ago, kicked my lazy tail into gear, and now I'm your boss. You do what I tell you and, in a few years, you could be mine.'

 **Did you end up being awarded the scholarship?**

Nope. **[He winces.]** Sal really lay into me for it, but what surprised me was how disappointed _I_ was. That's why he didn't let up on me, and I didn't complain about it. When the scholarship came around the next year, he recommended me again.

 **And you got it that time?**

Sure didn't, and you better believe I paid for that with another year of working for Sal.

 **...third time was the charm?**

 **[He laughs.]** Forth, actually. Four fucking years of working for the saltiest foreman in Burrower history. By that point, I'd spent so much time assisting tradesmammals that both the welder's _and_ plumber's unions actually offered to write off my ticket and make me a union member. My hourly would have gone from twenty bucks an hour to forty-two, overnight. Sal wasn't having any of that shit, though. He somehow convinced me to stick it out, and when I finally made it my parents were so over the moon that they named Sal my godfather. Picture that, will you? A sixty-one-year-old meerkat suddenly ending up with a twenty-seven-year-old rabbit for a godson.

Naturally, from the moment I started school, he'd gone from harassing me about my work to harassing me about my grades. He didn't let up for another four years, right up until he got to watch me graduate with my Structural Engineering degree.

 **That must have been a very satisfying moment for him.**

Sal? Satisfied? **[He snorts.]** Not likely. As soon as I'd graduated he shifted smoothly back to harassing me about work. He was sixty-five and he'd been riding my ass for a decade; I think it was just a habit by then.

That said, I'm pretty sure the second proudest day of his life was the first time I got appointed the lead engineer for a burrow project. It wasn't anything fancy – just a small unit for a family of sixty. The first day, I gather up all the team leads and give them an overview of the project, our timelines, survey info; all the regular shit. I'm just finishing up when I hear this snort from the back of the room, and there's Sal leaning against the back wall.

He rolls his eyes at me, leans over the one of the other crew leads and says 'Can you believe this prick? Telling us what to do like he's the big expert?'. It probably would've stung if he hadn't been smiling at me the whole time. I was grinning just as big when I told him to stow his fucking attitude and get to work. I swear, Sal starts beaming like all his birthdays had come on the same day, and you know what he says? He says 'Whatever, kid. You're the boss.'

Goddamn right I was.

 **You said that was the second proudest?**

Oh yeah. He outright _told_ me that the proudest day was when I got picked for the Homestead Development Project.

 **How did Homestead's design process differ from St. Claire's?**

There were about a thousand differences, but it really came down to coordination and detail. Homestead was the single largest Burrower undertaking in the organization's history. It was going to be the burrow of the future. It was supposed to show that we'd learned from our mistakes, because we _had._

Nobody said it out loud anymore – not that they had to – but everyone was scared shitless of another St. Claire. It was completely woven into the Burrower mindset as the ultimate nightmare scenario. Some of the old boys like me joked about it, saying stuff like 'So your wife left you, took the kids, emptied your bank account, burned down your house, _and_ you've got cancer? Well look at the bright side...at least it ain't St. Claire.' That didn't mean we didn't take the possibility one-hundred-percent seriously.

The very first day of the planning process, every mammal involved in the project was handed their very own copy of the Hopps/Westfield Report and told to memorize it line-for-line. All the designers, architects, surveyors, and inspectors worked in pairs; each one double checking the other's work. Every single blueprint was scoured for flaws, and if there was even the slightest indication of a vulnerability, an engineering team would be assigned to hunt it down and kill it. The planning time for St. Claire was four years; Homestead took seven.

I swear to you, on my dear departed mother's grave, the goddamn space station wasn't planned this carefully. We were flat-out certain that we had every eventuality covered, and everything was going according to plan...right up until it wasn't.

 **Do you remember what you were doing when the alarms went off?**

Who doesn't? It was a little after lunch, and I'd been top-side all morning walking a bunch of rookies through basic inspection techniques and introductory structural maintenance. Any other week and I would've been working on one of the lower levels. Instead, I was trying to take it easy. I was twenty-one when I joined the Burrowers, and I'd worked with them for almost thirty years. I guess you could say that Homestead was supposed to be my retirement tour.

Nobody really reacted at first, not even me, but that was just a result of bad timing. An hour earlier, the site office announced that they'd bumped the seismic alarm tests up to that afternoon. They were going to do it overnight, but I guess they wanted more mammals on site in case any of the alarms didn't work and needed repairs. When the sirens started blaring, I honestly didn't pay them much attention. It actually took me a minute to realize that the alarms hadn't stopped, even though tests are only supposed to last a few seconds.

 **What was the overall response on site?**

Less than fucking ideal. There was confusion everywhere, like no one knew what they were supposed to be doing.

 **Aren't Burrowers prepared to deal with that kind of situation?**

Kid, nothing can _prepare_ you for that kind of situation. Imagine if you were told, every single day, that today was the day your house might burn down. When it finally happened, do you think you'd stand there rationally and think 'Well, there it goes'? I doubt it.

Besides, most of our experienced personnel were down below. The mammals on the surface were mostly support roles. There were maybe a hundred Burrowers around who'd seen a major cave-in before, and barely a dozen who really remembered St. Claire – myself included. Sure, they'd all trained for something like this, but now that it was real it felt like every damn one of them was looking to the mammal beside them and asking what to do. I knew that if someone didn't start getting shit squared away, that uncertainty was gonna turn into panic.

I grabbed the bullhorn I'd been using to 'motivate' the trainees, cranked the volume, jumped up on a truck and started shouting orders. I honestly didn't know what the next move was, either. I needed time to get a fix on the situation, and I was gonna buy that by just giving everyone something to do. I told everyone in earshot – and when you're dealing with rabbits, earshot is pretty damn far – to either find their partner, or to team up with someone in the same trade. That ate up about ten minutes, which was enough time to alert Tri-Burrow Search & Rescue and call up Bunnyburrow General and tell 'em to get ready for a shitty day.

Once everyone was paired up, I had them spread the word for all available Burrowers to gear up and be standing by for orders outside the main causeway in fifteen minutes. I must've sounded like I knew what I was talking about, 'cause just about everyone in sight scattered. The only ones left, most of whom were looking at me like I'd grown a third ear, were the old-timers and hard-chargers; the most capable and experienced mammals there.

Except for a handful of Foremen, they were all specialists. There was about a dozen Medics, which was goddamn blessing all on its own. I sent them over to the causeway entrance to help the injured as they were coming out and buy time until they could be evacuated. There was the usual grab bag collection of Smokies, Bashers, and Fish, but I'll be damned if I knew what to do with 'em right then, and a pair of Blast-Rabbits. **[He laughs.]** Though only one of them was _actually_ a rabbit.

Hang on. You _do_ know what I'm talking about, right? Cause the nicknames can get a little confusing. **[I nod.]** Okay, if you say so.

Well, then we had our three Pathfinders. I recognized the bat brothers, Pierre and Andre Chauve-Souris; those two had been around almost as long as I had. The third Pathfinder was a fox I hadn't met before, and I'll be goddamned if he didn't look anxious as hell. He was standing stiff as a board, tail puffed right out, and I thought I knew why when I saw the ZDC markings on his coveralls and not a corrections officer in sight.

 **Did that concern you? Seeing a convict without a guard?**

Looking back, it probably should have, but he was a Pathfinder and the Chauve-Souris brothers seemed okay with him. Besides, he wasn't looking around like he wanted to escape; his eyes were fixed solidly on the tunnel entrance. A few burrowers would emerge every few seconds, coughing and stumbling, and each time he'd sorta lean toward them like he was trying to get a closer look.

Anyway, we had way bigger problems right then. Between all of us, we managed to hammer out a rough plan of action. Each of our Pathfinders would take a crew of about twenty other Burrowers with them. They'd clear a path as they went, and if they found anyone or came across a situation they weren't equipped to handle, they'd hold position or fall back as needed while we sent up the necessary specialists. I'm not gonna claim it was a perfect plan but considering what we were working with it seemed like the way to go.

All three of them were gone the second I said go, like I'd shot them out of a damn cannon. They rounded up their teams and by the time the main body of Search & Rescue arrived on site, we were about as close to organized as we were going to get. I'd gotten everyone pointed in the right direction, but I'm not too proud to know when I'm out of my depth. I left SAR in charge of managing the rescue operations while I booked it for the site office to try and figure out what the hell was going on.

It turned out that while we'd been scrambling to get things on the move outside, our administrative team had been hard at work. I gotta give it to them; they dealt with a lot of chaos and handled it like professionals. Somehow, even with everyone running around like headless chickens, they managed to compile a list of who was still missing in under half an hour. It wasn't a pretty picture. Even with a healthy margin of error, the most optimistic estimates were still showing that there were nearly a thousand Burrowers unaccounted for.

By the time I set foot in the site office, they'd already started collating the incoming damage reports as quickly as they were coming in. The Site Manager was grabbing every single engineering mammal she could find, getting us to compare the incoming information to Homestead's schematics. The problem was that none of what we were being told made any sense. We went over every damn inch of those blueprints, and I knew that superstructure like the back of my paw.

The kind of failures that were being reported just couldn't happen.

 **Do you mean that it was extremely unlikely?**

No, I mean it was extremely fucking impossible. Like, drop a glass and it only shatters on the inside kind of impossible. It was as if a third of the load-bearing members just decided to up and fail for no particular reason and the other two thirds didn't get the fucking memo.

Major collapses are like a chain reaction. Something goes wrong, then the things around it go wrong, and so on and so on. That reaction usually comes to a halt, but it's always a gradual progression. Each event has a little less energy than the last until the chain just runs outta steam. Homestead's collapse just _stopped_ , and none of us could figure out why. The last support beam to fail wasn't particularly reinforced, and neither was the one after it. There was no physical reason for the chain reaction to just freeze in its tracks there.

We wanted to get someone down there to investigate, but everyone was prioritized to conduct rescue operations and we were limited to only two ways into the burrow. Of the eight significant openings in and out of Homestead, six of them were blocked; four had collapsed altogether. All we had to work with was the main causeway entrance and the northeast maintenance tunnel.

To this day, we have no idea how the northeast entrance stayed intact. It was right in the middle of the most heavily damaged area. By all logical sense, it should have gone to pieces. In the two years since, we've managed to reconstruct and analyze everything about Homestead, but we just can't explain that one. Even today, a lot of burrowers are superstitious about it; some of them to the point that they'll only enter an active construction site from the northeast. As far as _I'm_ concerned, the Gate* is just one of those weird as hell things. Most of us were just thanking whoever or whatever was listening that we even _had_ two ways in. We were on the clock; any good luck was welcome.

 **On the clock?**

Oh, yeah. If we were too slow then there'd be nothing to recover but cold bodies.

We weren't dealing with a collapsed building or some dumb kit that fell down a well. In those cases, the trapped mammal is usually safe as long as their surroundings are stable, and they're not seriously injured. Sometimes you can even get some food or water in to keep their spirits up.

That's not the case in a cave-in. There could be thousands of tons of rock between them and any kind of resupply, even if starvation or dehydration were the most immediate problem. What they really need to worry about is hypothermia, because it gets cold down there. Real cold. Especially if you can't move around. Bit by bit, the rocks leech the heat out of you. That's why Pathfinders carry so many rations; burning raw calories is the only way their bodies have to generate heat.

Deep cave rescues are always pressed for time, which meant we had a week's worth of digging to do, and about a day to do it. We had diggers working as fast and as hard as they could, trying not to think about how the structure around them might be about as stable as a house of cards in a stiff breeze, and never once complaining or asking to be pulled out. Most of them probably never even considered it, even when every rumble or creak had them jumping.

 **Why not?**

 **[He sighs.]** Here's the thing, kid; there's been an understanding between Burrowers going right back to the beginning of the organization. No one gets left behind. There were a lot of rabbits at St. Claire, hundreds probably, who might have survived if the rescuers had the infrastructure to get to them and the determination to do it in time. Nobody wanted that to happen to them and nobody wanted it to happen to a friend. That's why we were pushing with everything we had, kid. Because we knew that they'd have done the same for us.

We kept at it all afternoon and on into the evening. As the sun started getting low, we had these high-power floodlights brought in to keep the area lit. We knew word had long since gotten back to town, and we had our first visitor just as the sun dropped below the horizon.

There's this local fox - come to think of it, he was actually the _only_ local fox back then. Anyway, his name's Gid** and he'd started his own bakery about a year earlier. He came driving up in this ridiculous-looking pink truck, trailer in tow, completely ignoring every single laugh aimed his way. He'd pulled his whole damn Carrot Days Festival setup out of storage and before we knew it he had a tent-kitchen set up right on the spot. It took about ten minutes for one of our mechanics to hook him up to the site's power grid, but for the rest of the night that fox was a goddamn baking _machine_. That little tent of his was pumping out every kind of baked deliciousness you could think of, and you can't even imagine what it did for morale. Burrowers would drag themselves out of the tunnel, half fucking dead from exhaustion, then that fresh-baked bread smell would hit them and their faces would just light up.

It was just an hour after Gid arrived that other locals from town started trickling in, looking for any way they could support us. A couple of other local businesses started to set up their own tents, then a couple more did the same. By nine o'clock, we had a regular goddamn town square on our hands. They made sure that every belly was kept full, that there was never a shortage of tea or hot chocolate, and that a tired mammal always had a warm place to lay down. What's more, not a single one of them would accept so much as a dime; they didn't even have tip jars out.

It wasn't just businesses, either. I saw the entire Bunnyburrow High School football team working as stretcher-bearers. They were rushing back and forth to carry the wounded to the medical tents, where volunteers were offering whatever care and comfort they could to the injured mammals there. They never hesitated or gave it a second thought. They _could_ help, so they _did_ help.

We were still going strong when the sun came back up. The initial collapse had happened a little after one o'clock in the afternoon, and we were rolling into the eighteenth straight hour of operations when a runner came tearing up from one of the forward rescue teams. I didn't hear what they said at the time, but I sure as hell saw the fear on the site manager's face. A second later she was sending up a general evacuation order; they got all personnel back on the surface as fast as their feet could carry them. **[He laughs quietly.]** Well, at least they _wanted_ all personnel topside. But like the old song goes, you can't always get what you want. They could order a full evacuation, but that didn't mean everyone was going to follow those orders.

There were three who didn't. No...who _couldn't._ Those three mammals went deeper into Homestead because they couldn't stomach the idea of retreat. They were honest-to-gods heroes, and a lot of Burrowers are alive because of them.

 **Who were they?**

I got three names for you, kid, so you'd best write 'em down; Mikaere Ngata, Mike Gatherpole, and Nicholas goddamn Wilde.

~o~o~o~

 *** Since the Homestead incident, Burrowers have come to refer to its northeast tunnel entrance as The Iron Gate.**

 **** Gideon Grey - Owner of** ** _Gideon Grey's Real Good Baked Stuff_** **and first non-rabbit recipient of the Bunnyburrow Civic Integrity Award.**


	5. Pt 4 - Partners in Crime

**A/N:** _Wow! I can't believe how much people are loving this story! Thank you to everyone who took the time to leave their feedback. It's been really interesting to hear what stood out most to different readers, or what story elements really resonated with them._

 _Just so you all know, I have every intention of completing this story. There are seven more chapters after this one, 70% of the remaining story is already written, and my goal will be to put out a new chapter every week - either Friday evening or Saturday morning. After it's finished, I promise I'll be turning my attention back to_ _ **Forty Glimpses**_ _._

~o~o~o~

 **The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective  
Part 4: Partners in Crime  
** _by Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 **ooooo**

 **"** **Burrowers dedicated their lives to making the world a better place. Something inside of me needed to be a part of that."**

Judith Hopps – Rabbit  
Pathfinder

 **ooooo**

 **Judy Hopps is, in many ways, the antithesis of the stereotypical bunny. Unlike her parents and grandparents, who were all farmers, she worked the majority of her life toward the singular goal of becoming a member of the Zootopia Police Department. After it became impossible for her to do so, she sought out – and discovered – another way to distinguish herself among her fellow bunnies.**

 **Sitting on the patio of a small café just off Bunnyburrow's town square, our conversation is occasionally interrupted by the friendly greetings of passing mammals. Surprisingly few of them call her by her given name, however. In a region populated predominantly by rabbits, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, she is the only one who is lightheartedly referred to as "Carrots".**

I was nine when I told my parents I wanted to be a police officer when I grew up. Well, I actually announced it to them, and half the town, onstage at the annual Carrot Days Festival. They told me - I'm not exaggerating here - that I'd be better off if I just gave up on my dreams and settled. I mean, I love my parents, but what kind of advice is that for a kid?

I was determined to show them – and everyone else – that I could do it. Unfortunately, my plans were slightly hampered by a lack of any nearby criminals to chase, so I decided to show everyone my keen deductive skills instead. I went looking for some kind of case to crack, but my family's burrow wasn't exactly overflowing with unsolved mysteries. You couldn't even find a spot with a bad wi-fi signal. The closest 'mysterious' place I could think of was an old well on the edge of my family's property, so I grabbed some rope, packed a lunch, and headed off to uncover its secrets. I was only three-quarters of the way down when the beam I'd tied my rope around gave way.

I was incredibly lucky. Not only because I managed to land without breaking anything, but because the well wasn't entirely dried up. There was just enough water at the bottom to break my fall a bit, but not enough to drown me. Even so, it was much too high to jump out of and the walls were too slick to climb. I yelled until my throat was raw as the small patch of sky I could see faded from blue to orange to deep red, until eventually it was so dark that I couldn't even see my own paws. The small flashlight I'd brought lasted a little while, but I'd forgotten to check the batteries and pretty soon it went dark, too.

I remember thinking back to it years later, when Pop-Pop...my grandfather, I mean...told me what it was like at St. Claire.

I didn't know how long I sat in the dark when the silence was broken by the shouts of several mammals above me. I could even hear her mother's voice, frantically calling my name. I shouted at the top of my lungs and it wasn't long until I was watching as a figure was lowered down from the well opening. As they grew closer, I eventually recognized Jimmy Burton from two farms over. When he reached down I practically leaped into his arms, and the way I felt when he carried me from that well to my mother's arms changed my life forever.

I'd seen him a few times around town or hanging around with some of my older brothers, and he'd joined the Burrowers right out of high school.

 **Was that what inspired you to do the same?**

No, I was still determined to be a police officer, much to my parent's disappointment. It was an ongoing battle right to the end of high school, and it didn't help that I was kind of a tombunny. I'd rather play tag with my brothers than have a tea party with my sisters. They wanted me to take ballet lessons, I insisted on learning martial arts. My mother kept buying me dresses; I kept wearing track pants. Is it really any wonder that my dad started calling me Jude the Dude and my mom even tried to set me up with a couple of other girls? **[She laughs, shaking her head]** I guess their hearts were in the right place.

The three of us couldn't see eye-to-eye on my future, but we eventually learned to compromise. When I wanted to go to college and study criminal justice, they agreed to pay for it if I agreed to get a minor in something more 'farming-oriented'. I thought it was ridiculous, but college was expensive, and my babysitting money just wasn't going to cut it. I decided to humor them and got myself a minor in Geology.

I was certain that the proposed Mammal Inclusion Initiative was going to be my big break. I'd followed its progress religiously in my last year of college, watching it go from the Zootopia Mayor's Office to the city council. It was finals week when it came time for the vote, and since the city actually streams their council meeting online – apparently Lionheart was really into the whole 'open government' thing –I was watching the live feed literally from the edge of my seat.

It was close; just two more votes would have done it. But close doesn't count and the MMI proposal was struck down. Without it, I couldn't even meet the minimum application standards for the ZPD. Everything I'd worked for, stolen away with the stroke of a pen.

 **That must have been difficult.**

It was heartbreaking. My roommate came home that evening and found me in tears.

My parents were thrilled, naturally, and I managed to endure a whole week of 'We told you a bunny couldn't be a cop' before I snapped. My mom and I got into a huge fight, and we both said some stuff we wish we hadn't. I told her that any family that didn't care about my dreams wasn't worth loving. She called me a selfish, ungrateful brat who dreamt for better things than she deserved. We didn't speak to one another for weeks afterward, forcing dad to be our go-between.

It was horrible, and I'd love to say I was the mature one, but in the end, it was mom who reached out to me. We both apologized and had a long talk about how we'd gotten to that point. She acknowledged that she hadn't been as supportive as she should have been, and I admitted that I'd let some of my determination turn into entitlement. Then she surprised the hell out of me by suggesting another way I could help my fellow mammals; by joining the Burrowers. I'd never considered the idea before, but the more we talked about it the more I loved what the Burrowers stood for. They ventured into the scariest places I could imagine and turned them into homes. Right into the deep dark, just so their fellow bunnies could have a safe place to live.

 **I've noticed that the Burrowers seem to have characteristics in common with a military organization. Would you say that's true?**

You could look at it that way. There are some similarities, I guess. We have a chain of command and wear uniforms, but there isn't any saluting, and no one can _force_ you to do something that isn't safe. I think being officially referred to as a 'Corps' and having recruiting offices is probably what created that image. I know that when my mom and I walked into the Bunnyburrow recruiting office, it sure didn't look like the military. It looked more like...I don't know...a cellphone store? There was an entire wall of pamphlets, but instead of phone plans each one explained the details of a different job. The whole thing was divided into four colored sections; green, blue, orange and red.

The green section was made up of clerical and administrative positions. Things like supply clerk, secretary, mammal resources, payroll manager... stuff like that. I don't have to tell you which direction my mother was nudging me in. She was doing her best, but she was still my mom and she worried about all her kids.

The blue section was the largest and contained all the support roles; the cooks, cleaners, and truck drivers. It was also where you could find the scientific and analytical roles. That was where my minor in geology would have helped me the most.

Orange was where things got interesting, because that's where most of the forward positions were. Diggers, heavy mechanics, drill operators, structural welders and so on. There were also some engineering positions, but I didn't have the qualifications to apply for any of those.

The red section was the smallest. Just a single column with the six Specialist positions; Scuba Operations, Toxic Environment Clearance, Structural Recovery Mechanic, Advanced Trauma Technician, Demolitions Technician, and Subterranean Reconnaissance Specialist. **[She grins.]** Or, if you're talking to a Burrower; Fish, Smokey, Basher, Medic, Blast-Rabbit, and Pathfinder.

These were the most dangerous jobs out there, and I was shocked to learn that some of them weren't even open to rabbits. Bashers needed to be able to lift a minimum of seventy pounds, which is twice the weight of the average bunny. Fish needed to operate up to a hundred and fifty feet underwater, and rabbit eardrums don't handle extreme pressure changes very well. I could have applied for demolitions or toxic environment work, but Smokies tend to develop lung conditions and I'd heard that most Blast-Rabbits were stone-deaf before they were fifty. And as for being a medic? **[She frowns.]** I'm not the squeamish type, but that doesn't mean I wanted to end up covered in blood.

That left Pathfinder, which sounded amazing. They also didn't accept rabbits, which if I'm being honest made it sound even better. I was still sore from being denied a place in the ZPD and itching for a chance to prove myself. Being told that the position I wanted most was being denied to me had my hackles right up...so to speak.

I mean, I understood their reasoning. Pathfinders operated in pairs, in the dark, under extremely dangerous and often unpredictable conditions, and almost always out of communication range. If you got in trouble, forget about calling for any kind of help. You had to save yourself. For most bunnies, that's the perfect recipe for a five-alarm panic attack.

For me, it might as well have been an engraved invitation.

 **Didn't you say the position was closed to rabbits?**

No, I said they didn't _accept_ rabbits, at least not traditionally. That's not to say I would've been the first ever rabbit Pathfinder, but in the 28 years before that point, there'd only been one other. The Burrowers almost always chose mammals they regarded as 'better equipped' for the job; bats, mustelids, small felines. But as diverse as it is, it's still a rabbit-run organization. I met the basic standards, so they couldn't keep me from taking the qualification tests.

I had three months to prepare before the next intake. I may not have had an opportunity to take the ZPD qualification tests, but this felt a little like a second chance. I definitely wasn't going to let it slip by. I poured myself into training like I never had before. My usual morning jog turned into a ten-mile run every day, and I drove out to the mountains on the weekends to go rock-climbing. I studied every single guidebook and operations manual I could get my paws on, and when those couldn't answer all my questions, I talked to any current or retired Pathfinder who'd give me the time of day. None of them thought much of my chances, but they humored me and that was enough.

I spent most mornings carrying haybales from one end of the barn to the other, and every other afternoon walking the halls of my family's burrow blindfolded. Bunnies can't use echolocation the same way bats can, but our hearing is still pretty good. If a bat's ears can turn sound into a photograph, then a bunny's can turn it into a crayon drawing. Not ideal, but if you practice and pay attention then at least you won't walk into anything.

It was close enough to my preparations for ZPD training to make my parents nervous, even after I assured them that the ZPD wasn't in my future anymore. To tell the truth, I'm probably lucky I didn't make it into the ZPD. I did the math once and figured out that if the Mammal Inclusion Initiative _had_ passed the vote and I _had_ made it into the next Academy intake class, my graduation date would have put me in Zootopia right around the time that the first savage cases started to appear. **[She shakes her head.]** Those poor mammals.

 **You're referring to the predators who went savage?**

Yeah. I mean, I may have bought into the whole 'reverting to their primitive ways' thing at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it didn't make sense. Did you know that there hasn't been a single savage mammal case outside of Zootopia? Not even one. That's why I think it was the city that did it to them. I've heard a lot of awful stories about what living there was like for some predators, and I think that the stress got to some of the them. I've seen plenty of bunnies who've cracked under pressure, and at the end of the day we're all just mammals.

 **That's very open-minded.**

It's just one bunny's opinion. I didn't always think this way, but things change. **[She shrugs.]** Besides, it'd be kind of absurd if I were frightened of predators these days, wouldn't it?

 **I suppose that's true.**

Anyway, when Qualifications Day finally came around I not only rocked them, I scored in the ninety-ninth percentile. It didn't matter whether they liked bunnies or not; with a score like that, they couldn't possibly refuse me a place in the next training group. If my parents were secretly hoping I wouldn't make it, but they never said anything. I think that by that point, they'd accepted that I was never going to be a 'regular' bunny.

I remember my first day of training like it was yesterday. I'd been so excited that I hadn't slept a wink the night before, and I was still practically trembling in anticipation. I was so happy, I didn't really register the fox who was eyeing me like I'd lost my mind.

 **That was Nicholas Wilde.**

Sure was.

 **The two of you were working together right from the beginning?**

'Working together' might be overstating it a bit. We were assigned to the same training group, but that didn't mean we were permanent partners or even that we got along. I wouldn't go so far as to say we _hated_ each other, but we certainly didn't like each other. He had a serious chip on his shoulder, and I had some pretty biased views about foxes.

 **Biased? In what way?**

I'd had a childhood bully who left me with some issues. Regarding foxes, I mean. I'd never have admitted it at the time, though. I didn't _think_ I carried any prejudices, but you know the kind of mammal who'd say something like, 'I've got nothing against foxes, but...'? **[She points to herself.]**

He didn't really appear on my radar until about two weeks in, when he decided to mess with me during a classroom exercise. I like to think that if I hadn't been so tired from the course's relentless pace, I wouldn't have reacted so strongly. In reality I decided to act like a jerk and picked a fight with him the first opportunity I got. It got a little out of hand – sort of like the argument I had with my mother – and it really set the tone for the next six weeks.

Not to mention that was the day he saddled me with the nickname 'Carrots'. I know he was just trying to get under my skin – which he definitely did – but since I was the only bunny there the name stuck like glue.

We were right at the end of our second month, just about to leave for specialist training, when my grandmother passed away. She and I had been pretty close, and her death hit me hard. I actually considered dropping out of training altogether, so some of the other trainees came together to offer me some support. It was really sweet of them. I started telling them some stories about my Grandma. It made me feel better to share, I guess. I'd just gotten to telling them about how, when I was little, she'd let me stay up late so I could say goodnight to moon rabbit.

 **Moon rabbit?**

It's just this silly old story she used to tell. She said that a sloth, an otter, and a rabbit made a pact to do a bunch of good deeds on the day of the full moon, because they thought the gods would reward them for it. They came across an old and starving stag, so they decided to get him something to eat. The sloth went to gather fruits from the trees, but he was so slow that the stag would starve to death before he got back. The otter went to collect some kelp but got distracted playing in the water and didn't return. The rabbit stayed, but he forgot that a stag doesn't eat meat. Since he only knew how to gather grass, he offered to let the hungry mammal eat _him_ instead and threw himself at the stag's feet. **[She chuckles.]** The original dumb bunny.

So, instead of eating the rabbit, the stag reveals himself to be one of the old gods. I forget which one he turned out to be, but he was so impressed by the rabbit's gesture that he drew a picture of him on the Moon. And it's sort of true, too. If you look at the full moon and trace a line around the dark patch, it _does_ kind of look like a rabbit.

I was just finishing the story when I hear this snort of laughter, and there's Nick at the door, paws in pockets and smirk firmly in place. He just shook his head and said "Bunnies, eh? So emotional." **[She holds her paws up]** Now, I want to be _super_ clear about this; when he said that, he had no idea that my Grandma had passed away. He was just being his usual smartass-self. He'd been just as snarky to me before that, if not more so, so he couldn't possibly have predicted that I'd start crying. I was a little surprised myself to be honest, and I just ran off without saying anything.

Someone must have filled him in after I left. I knew he hadn't meant to hurt me and I kept looking for an opportunity to tell him as much, but he was avoiding me like he owed me money. Over the next two days, every time he spotted me he'd get the same look on his face - eyes wide, ears pinned back - and run off.

Then we were all off to specialist training and I didn't see him for another month.

 **What field did you specialize in?**

Geological Analysis and Subterranean Cartography - rocks and maps, basically. Being a Pathfinder isn't all about danger and excitement, you know. There's actual reconnaissance and mapping work to be done. We still kept up our physical training, but other than that it was mostly classroom work. A lot of it was stuff I'd already learned in college, which left me with a lot of time to think.

Nick's reaction to upsetting me had cast our interactions in a whole new light. As mean as he'd been to me, I realized that I'd never actually given him a reason not to be. I'd just fired back with my own attitude. I couldn't even remember which one of us started antagonizing the other first; only that it had quickly become a habit. I have to admit, I was a little ashamed of how immature I'd been about it. I resolved that the next time I saw him, the very first thing I'd do was corner him, apologize for my behavior and tell him that I forgave him for his. Of course, he never gave me the chance.

The moment he caught sight of me, he ran over to apologize himself. He told me that he didn't mean to make light of my mourning, and that he was very sorry to hear that the mother of my mother had passed. That's how he put it; the mother of my mother. He said that my Grandma must have been very proud of me, and that she would be watching over me.

I didn't quite know how to react. The fox I'd grown accustomed to dealing with every day was sly, sarcastic and irreverent. The fox I'd expected to see was cagey and skittish. I didn't know what to do with the fox standing in front of me, speaking formally and looking deeply apologetic. Then he hands me a little box wrapped in brown paper, and I opened it to find this. **[She gestures to a pendant she wears around her neck, a small disk I now realize is an engraved silver moon.]** He said that working underground shouldn't keep me from saying goodnight to moon rabbit.

The poor fox looked a little startled when I started crying again, but he was sharp enough to realize they were happy tears. We decided to make a fresh start, which was admittedly a little tricky. We spent the last month of training in different teams, and whenever we saw each other we were kind of walking on eggshells. There were a few awkward conversations. Eventually we managed to relax around one another, and by the time graduation came around we were getting along like a house on fire.

The graduation ceremony was amazing. I'd done something only one other bunny had ever managed and done it amazingly well. Afterward, the whole graduating class went out to celebrate. I was so proud, and I really tried to have a good time, but it didn't seem fair to be sitting there while Nick was locked in a little room. I decided I was going to include him in the celebrations, and luckily the bartender was an old friend from high school. I convinced her to slip me a few unopened bottles and let me out the back door.

Sneaking past the guards was a lot easier than it should have been. So was getting right up to Nick's room. The silly fox looked so surprised when he found me standing out there, and even more surprised when I handed him a bottle of cider through the small opening at the bottom of his window. I'd honestly just meant to stop by, share a drink and be on my way. I couldn't believe it when I realized the sun was coming up and we were going to be reporting for our partner assignments in a couple of hours.

I'd worked super hard at _not_ speculating on who my partner might be. I didn't want to be disappointed, and I knew it was important to maintain an open mind. Then I walked into the training center later that morning, my eyes caught a flash of red fur, and I knew in an instant that there was only one mammal I'd be happy with. Then our eyes met, and I could see the feeling was mutual. That was pretty terrifying.

 **Terrifying?**

I went from being happy with anyone to potentially _unhappy_ with almost everyone. My stomach was tied in knots with each team they announced. Of course, I never needed to worry. Everything worked out perfectly, and from that day onward Nick & I were the Pathfinder's dream team. Between my ears and his eyes & nose, there wasn't a single assignment we couldn't crack. We uncovered natural gas pockets, tracked underground rivers, and even discovered a vein of gold where a septic tank was supposed to be placed.

We had each other's backs 100% and there were dozens of times where one of us might've died if the other hadn't been there. We once got sent to check out an abandoned mine, and didn't realize until it was too late that our map wasn't accurate. We were down there for four days, completely lost. We ran out of rations, and by the end all we had was one barely lit flashlight and Nick's night vision to guide us. It was one of the only two times I really thought we might not make it. **[She shivers.]** The second time was Homestead.

 **What can you tell me about the day of the collapse?**

It wasn't a particularly remarkable day. I actually barely remember the first half, but that's not surprising. It was mostly preparation for another recon. The diggers had broken into yet another un-surveyed cavern and needed a couple of Pathfinders to make sure it was safe to keep going.

What I do remember is that Nick and I decided to have our lunch sitting on a little hill near the site. What made that so memorable was that we almost always ate on the go, gobbling our food as we rushed from one place to another. It was one of the things that defined us; when we were together we both felt so energized.

 **How long had the two of you worked together at that point?**

A little over a year. Long enough to know each other better than we knew any other mammal. We'd gotten really close while we'd been partners; absolute best friends. Though, if I'm being honest, I think I'd started to feel a certain tension.

 **Tension? How so?**

 **[She smirks at me.]** Well, when a male and a female like each other very much...

 **Oh. I...er...no, that's fine. I understand.**

Anyway, for some reason we'd decided to enjoy a relaxed meal out in the sunshine. I can't remember what we were talking about, exactly. Nothing important or life-changing, but I still had butterflies in my stomach. Like we were both _not_ saying something as loudly as we could. You know what they say about hindsight; looking back, it all seems so obvious. At the time, I don't think either of us could quite explain what we were feeling. I know I couldn't. Maybe if we'd had more time, we'd have gotten to talking about it on that hill. But then Nick's watch alarm told us it was time to get back to doing what we did best.

I sometimes wonder about that. About why we had lunch outside that day, or what we'd have talked about if his watch hadn't gone off. How many lives would be changed? Would things have turned out differently between us? Would I have still hurt him the way I did, just on a different day?

 **What do you mean?**

There'd been an incident earlier in the week. One of the work-release convicts - a sand cat, I think - had a panic attack in one of the narrower passageways. It happened from time to time, even to experienced Burrowers. The sheer scope of the danger you're always in can really freak you out. You have to learn to just put it out of your mind. If you let it creep in, think about how much rock is above your head...

Well, this cat let the thoughts in, and he decided that he wanted out. Clawed up a guard and a couple of diggers on the way through. They eventually stopped him, but after that things were tense. Bunnies were just a little more cautious around predators, and a _lot_ more cautious around predator convicts.

I started hearing snide little remarks from some of the other bunnies. Nick and I would be walking by and I'd hear someone mutter something like 'Look out for the big bad fox.' Most of them were the kind of bunny who already made those kinds of comments in private, and only now felt safe doing so out loud. Even so, I was tired of listening to these jerks while they took shots at my partner. I wanted to stand up for him, and so that's what I did.

'He's not like other predators.' Those were my exact words. When I look back, I like to think that I was referring to the other convicts, and not predators in general. Maybe if I'd said convicts instead, I wouldn't have been forced to see that look of betrayal in his eyes. I didn't know what I'd said to upset him; all I knew was that I'd tried to defend him from some narrow-minded jerks, and now he was angry with _me_. I felt so...I don't know...indignant? I could feel my temper bubbling up, but I didn't have time to say anything before he stormed back up the causeway.

I don't know if it was arrogance or just willful ignorance, but I really thought it was just a male ego thing. I figured that he'd been offended by the idea of a little female bunny coming to his rescue, and that just annoyed me even more. I should have gone after him, tried to really talk to him, but I just let him go. I told myself we'd talk about it after he'd had a little time to cool off. Looking for a distraction, I took the cargo elevator down to start prepping for our next trip out into the caverns.

I'd only been down at the bottom for a few minutes when I heard it; a rapid series of loud thumping sounds. If I hadn't been so irritated, I might've given more thought to them. As it was, I didn't bother paying them much attention until the tremors began above me; that's one thing you _never_ ignore down there. I had hoped it was just shifting rock at first, but it kept getting louder. It was sheer luck that I happened to look up in time to see the elevator scaffolding collapsing down to meet me. **[She pauses.]** Have you ever been in a car accident?

 **No, I haven't.**

Any kind of traumatic event?

 **[I shake my head.]**

They do weird things to your memories. It all seems to happen so fast. Looking back, some images are razor sharp, while others are lost in the haze. I remember the falling scaffolding so clearly, but I don't remember grabbing my pack or turning to run away. It's like the scene just snaps from me standing there to me sprinting down the new tunnel and screaming at everyone I passed to follow me. It sounded like an entire mountain was coming down on top of us, and all we could do was make a break for the uncharted caverns and pray we made it far enough.

The cavern entrance was just in sight when a sudden shock blew me off my feet and into a small side alcove. The last thing I remember before the dark was wishing I hadn't let Nick walk away.


	6. Pt 5 - Heaven Sent

**The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective  
Part 5: Heaven Sent  
** _by Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 **ooooo**

 **"** **If you see someone in trouble, you find a way to help. If you can't find a way to help, you're probably not looking hard enough."**

Mikaere Ngata – Mongoose  
Demolitions Technician (Blast-Rabbit)

 **ooooo**

 **Despite his gruff appearance, Mikaere Ngata is surprisingly affable. An immigrant from the island nation of New Zooland and former member of the New Zooland Defence Force (NZDF), the mongoose signed up with the Burrowers just three weeks after his official return to civilian life, becoming one of their foremost explosives and demolition experts.**

 **Although he is best recognized for his actions after Homestead had been emptied, some post-incident reports state that prior to the evacuation, he almost single-handedly dug through no less than eight levels and cleared a path for the search teams behind him, saving the lives of nearly two hundred of his fellow Burrowers. Despite this, Ngata has repeatedly refused to accept any kind of individual award or recognition for his actions, staunchly maintaining that it was a team effort.**

 **We meet in a small pub in Bunnyburrow, where he invites me to join him for a drink.**

There's something my father impressed on me when I was very young. He said that if you see someone in trouble, you find a way to help. If you _can't_ find a way to help, you're probably not looking hard enough. That was what originally pushed me to join the Defence Force right out of school; service to my country.

I served for six years, and that was a dodgy time to be in the military; tensions between the reptile and mammal populations in Australia had been growing for years. We'd taken a cue from the indigenous marsupials by adopting a neutral stance, but at the end of the day it was a much easier position for them to take. Neither the temperate-climate mammals or major reptiles had much interest in the outback; for the most part, they were happy to let the 'roos have it.

Then diplomacy finally failed, their civil war broke out, and the mammalian species started doing their level best to push the cold-bloods into the sea. Suddenly New Zooland went from being a neighboring country to looking like a pretty decent new home.

Now here's the thing about New Zooland; we don't have very many indigenous land mammals. We've got plenty of introduced species, like when my family came over in the late eighteen-hundreds, but most of the local warm-bloods are either bats or swimmers - seals and the like. We also had a bunch of local cold-bloods, geckos mostly. We'd all worked hard together to make a home there, and we weren't about to give it up to a bunch of snakes and crocs who couldn't be fucked to play nice with their neighbors.

 **Did you ever see combat?**

Not nearly as much as the Navy, but I saw my share. I was a Sapper attached to the Forty-First* when we repelled the crocs at Pawarenga, and again at Kahurangi when those damn copperheads tried to establish a claw-hold on the southern island. It was a rough few months that could have been a lot bloodier, but they were fighting on two fronts and their arrogance turned out to be our good fortune. **[He chuckles]** You pit a snake against a mongoose, and that scaly bastard is in for a nasty surprise.

After the new Australian Confederacy was formed and things started to cool down, I decided that I'd spent about enough time in uniform. I had plenty of job offers when I got out of the Army; everything from civilian construction companies to private military contractors. Most of them were offering salaries several times larger than what I'd made serving queen & country, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted. Then I heard about this outfit here in Mammalia who dug burrows and needed good mammals to help them do it.

I can't really say why the idea appealed to me the way it did, but I started emailing back and forth with a recruiter, asking about different positions and what they entailed. I wanted to know if they actually had a position that was worth my while, or if I'd just end up digging holes.

 **You didn't know about the role of Demolitions Technician?**

No. They don't actually advertise that job. Or any of the specialist roles, actually. Take a look at their website if you don't believe me; you won't find any of the 'red' positions on there. Officially, recruiters aren't even supposed to discuss them on the phone or by email. It keeps them from being swamped with blowhards and idiots looking for a cool job title. If you want to be a specialist, you have to go in and look a recruiter in the eye.

That's why I was a little confused with the direction the correspondence took off in. After I'd laid out the details of my job in the Army, the recruiter I'd been in contact with actually phoned me to insist that I visit a recruiting office. When I told her that I wasn't about to jump on a two-thousand buck flight just to chat with a different recruiter, she told me that they'd be happy to cover the costs. She wasn't one for the subtle approach and clearly wasn't going to take no for an answer, so I packed a duffel and flew off a few days later.

I'd told my mum I'd be back in a week, but when I called to tell her I'd decided to stay and take the job, the first thing she says is 'Of course you have, Micky. I've already shipped your things.' She always said I had a predictable way about me.

 **How much does your current position resemble your work in the military?**

It varies, to be honest. It's obviously a lot more relaxed, and the lack of violence is certainly part of the charm. On the other paw, it has the same sense of purpose and camaraderie; right down to the stupid nicknames.

It's always been a bit of a laugh; a mongoose being called a Blast-Rabbit. Some folk figure I'd take exception to it, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I don't care what anyone else says about rabbits. They might look soft and cuddly, but when the chips are down those buggers can be tough as nails. To be fair, the same could be said of a lot of Burrower species. We're all on the smaller side of the scale, and as far as most large mammals are concerned, more than a few of us fall into the category of 'cute'. **[He laughs]** Between you and me, I'd love to meet a mammal bold enough to look Sawtooth Odynski right in the eye and call him cuddly.

At Homestead, I watched plenty of 'cute' mammals dig until their paws blistered and bled. I saw wounded bunnies cry as they were carried off, not from the pain but because they weren't able to help. And most of all, I saw their fierce determination inspire the mammals around them.

There was this grimy little gopher I can never remember the name of. In the two months I knew him, he never missed an opportunity to slack off. No amount of yelling could motivate him otherwise. When those tunnels came down, though, I'll be damned if it didn't light a fire under his scrawny ass. He took up a pickaxe and attacked the rocks like a mammal possessed.

 **Where were you when you heard the Homestead alarms go off?**

Near enough to the main entrance the hear the reason they were going off. Well, the reason they were _still_ going off. They started out as seismic alarms, then this almighty roar comes tearing up the causeway. A few seconds later came the general alarms.

Everyone was still trying to get their heads on straight when this engineer named McMeadow got up on a truck and started barking orders. That did the trick; it only took him fifteen minutes to get just about everyone ready to go and headed to the causeway entrance. It was some damn fine leadership right when we needed it most. Once the bulk of the available burrowers were on their way, he gathered up the foremen and specialists and we started hammering out a plan. Once we were more or less sorted, I rounded up a pack of diggers and the lot of us went to work. I had a bad feeling about what might've happened, and my goal was to make it to the outer struts as quickly as possible to find out.

I only brought diggers who were aware and accepting of the risks, and together we went level-by-level and room-by-room, clearing out everyone we came across before we started chewing through to the next. Behind us were teams of inspectors and tradesmammals, locating and repairing any damaged infrastructure we found along the way. We worked for eight hours straight before I literally ordered everyone topside to grab some food and a couple hours of sleep. On the way back up I ran into Lucy McCloud. She'd been the only other Blast-Rabbit on site that day, and I know that if any mammal would be thinking along the same lines as I was, it'd be her.

Her team had been going in the opposite direction from mine, but like me she hadn't found anything unusual in eight hours of looking. We chalked up our 'suspicions' to overactive imaginations, got our respective teams fed and rested, then it was back into the tunnel to get back to it.

 **What do you think about accounts that state you alone were responsible for nearly two-thirds of the digging?**

You can't be serious, mate. I can dig as well as the next mongoose, but I'm not bloody Supermammal. We all took it one level at a time, everyone working as hard as they could; you can't ask any more of a mammal than that.

Anyway, we were about six hours in and thirty levels down when this chipmunk comes tearing up to me in a panic, chittering like he's trying to say every word at the same time. I was eventually able to make out that one of the electrical teams had discovered something I needed to see.

At that point, I'd been down there over sixteen hours. I was already knackered and really wasn't overflowing with patience. I demanded to know what was so bloody important, but he just kept insisting that I needed to see for myself. I finally let him guide me to whatever had him so spun up, all the while trying not to worry about what an electrical team could have found that would concern a Blast-Rabbit.

We finally reached this little side alcove right on the outside edge of the superstructure. A pair of electricians were huddled against the wall right across from it, eyeing the alcove fearfully; that got my attention. The chipmunk who'd led me there took a few steps in to point to an open electrical cabinet, and when I leaned over to see what he was pointing at I damn near swallowed my own tongue in shock.

 **What had they found?**

Exactly what I'd been afraid we were going to find; an explosive device duct-taped into the top corner of the cabinet and wired directly into the seismic alarm system. It wasn't some nutter's pipe-bomb, either. This was a professional demolition charge, packed with military-grade plastic explosive that still bore the original Zootopian Armed Forces markings and powerful enough to kill the lot of us if it blew. Probably the only reason that the charge _hadn't_ detonated was because the connections that linked it to the alarm hadn't been done properly. Rather than soldering the wire tips, whoever place the bomb had just twisted them together and slapped on a little electrical tape. Perhaps they'd been in a rush or heard someone coming, because it seemed like when the cabinet door had been closed, it'd knocked the wiring loose and cut the detonator off from its power supply.

I made short work of the detonator, but as I was removing it from the cabinet I noticed something even more unsettling than the device itself. On closer inspection, I realized that the device's placement was decidedly sloppy, like it'd been mounted too quickly, with shaky paws, by a mammal who didn't really know what they were doing. As if just _finding_ the bloody thing wasn't enough to ruin my day.

 **That was more significant?**

Back in the Army, I spent more than a few of my days either blowing things up or disarming other mammal's attempts at doing the same, occasionally providing the latter service for the police. I also spent a fair amount of time studying the techniques and patterns of bombmakers. That experience told me that the way this device had been built and the way that it'd been placed ran at odds to one another.

When you find an explosive device in a workplace or on a construction site, it's usually been placed in a hurry by some nut-job or an ex-employee with an axe to grind. Those bombs are generally fairly rudimentary; gunpowder or homemade explosive stuffed into a metal container and maybe a cheap kitchen timer rigged to function as a detonator. You'll usually find them jammed in a breakroom cupboard or taped behind some big propane tank. Somewhere that going to cause a big boom and a lot of visual damage, because they're usually trying to send a message and they want everyone to see it.

The problem was that although the way this device had been mounted in the cabinet matched that profile, nothing else did. Nut-jobs and disgruntled ex-employees didn't place their bombs in hard to find but structurally critical places, didn't integrate their device's detonator with an existing electronic alarm system, and sure as hell didn't use military-grade plastic explosives. Those were the sort of things _I'd_ been trained to do. What this looked like was a professional bombmaker who'd planned the attack, assembled the devices, and then sent in some hapless – and probably expendable – amateur to actually place them.

Following a hunch, I stuffed the disarmed device in my pack and followed the electrical conduits to the next support beam. When I got there, I wasn't surprised to discover another unexploded charge, then another at the next beam. The bombs had been set up in series, piggybacking their signal along the seismic alarm wires. That single broken connection in the chain had prevented who knows how many other explosives from going off.

Everyone would have heard if I'd reported it on the radio, so I sent a runner topside to notify the mammals in charge. Even though these explosives wouldn't detonate with the chain broken, I couldn't take the risk that this was the only chain.

 **How did your superiors react to this new information?**

Command responded exactly as they should have, by immediately ordering all personnel to double-time it back to the surface. No one was happy about it, of course, but orders were orders. It clearly wasn't safe to go any further. Homestead had been rigged to blow, and the only sane decision was to fall back. I assumed that once everyone was out, they'd send Blast-Rabbits like myself forward to start hunting out and disarming any remaining devices, then redeploy the rescue teams a safe distance behind us. I was almost at the top of the main causeway, when additional orders came down that all rescue operations were being put on hold until all the support beams could be checked and cleared by the structural inspection teams.

That stunned me enough to freeze me in my tracks; I actually remember a few other mammals walking right into me from behind. I couldn't believe _that_ was the plan. Even with multiple teams and under ideal conditions a full inspection could take weeks. At her widest, Homestead's main support structure had over a hundred and fifty load-bearing beams; one every hundred feet or so. There was no need to waste that kind of time when professional Blast-Rabbits were better equipped to find and disarm any remaining devices.

I was in the middle of figuring out whose tail I needed to go kick about it when a commotion off to one side caught my attention. One of the crooks was kicking up a hell of a fuss. You know, those convicts who'd volunteered to work for us in exchange for a shorter sentence? He was on the ground, scrapping with one of the correctional officers. Now, that in itself isn't unheard of. Every now and then one of them would get claustrophobic and try to make a break for fresh air. It'd already happened once that week, and usually all they needed was a good knock upside the head to get them sorted out.

I didn't realize what made this one unusual until I got close. This poor bugger wasn't just scared; he was practically in a frenzy. I really think that if he hadn't been all tangled up with one of their mates, the other guards would have shot him on the spot. He wasn't trying to escape, either. He was actually trying to fight his way back into the tunnel. Experienced Burrowers were rushing out, and this fox – who had every reason to follow them – was desperately trying to go in the opposite direction. That wasn't something you saw every day.

It didn't take much to pry him off the bobcat who was _supposed_ to be guarding him. I gave him a good shake, the obligatory whack about the head, and asked what the hell he was on about. He didn't say a thing - just looked me square in the eye.

 **That was Nicholas Wilde.**

Too right, it was. I'd vaguely remembered seeing him earlier when we were still mustering. I'd thought he looked anxious then, but now...

Look, let me tell you something; I've _been_ in battle. I've seen every kind of fear you can imagine in a mammal's eyes, and when I looked into his I could see that he wasn't afraid of death, or pain, or any kind of punishment the guards could dish out. He was afraid _for_ someone. That look in his eye told me that he was either going to get past me, or he'd die trying.

 **So, you let him go back?**

 _Let_ him go? Which part of 'die trying' did you misunderstand? No, I just gave him a smile, grabbed him by the front of his coveralls and hauled him around behind me. He stumbled for a second, then took off running and didn't look back. You'd better believe the guards were furious, but I just pointed down the causeway and said that if they were so keen to get him back, they were more than welcome to go fetch him. I also made sure to remind them not to shoot at any bombs they might come across.

Believe it or not, they suddenly weren't so eager to have him back in chains.

 **When did you decide to go back in as well?**

I'd already made up my mind before I sent Wilde off running. I couldn't very well let him go on alone, could I? As soon as the Corrections Officers were out of earshot, I turned to Lucy and told her I was going back in. She gave me this irritated look, like she'd been waiting for me to say as much and was annoyed it'd taken me so long to get around to it, then said, 'Of _course_ you are, you big idiot.'

She promised that she'd cover for me as long as she was able, and I took off back down the causeway. I caught up with Wilde at the first major junction point. I was certain that he'd just be standing there scratching his head and looking lost, but instead I found him next to a supply shed, fiddling with something at his feet and kitted up with what looked suspiciously like deep-cave reconnaissance gear. I was only a few paces away when he noticed me and stiffened up. It looked like he was getting ready to run again when he asked if I'd changed my mind; I told him I hadn't. I asked him if he'd changed his, and he answered the same.

I told him, flat-out, that if we were going to do this then he'd be following my lead. The bloody fox actually _smirks_ at me, pulls on a jacket, taps a patch on the sleeve, and says, 'Actually, _you're_ going to be following _my_ lead.' **[He laughs, shaking his head]** Bloody Pathfinders. Completely mad, the lot of them.

We didn't know if there'd be any more intact supply sheds ahead, so we scavenged everything we could possibly need from that one. We mostly focused on climbing gear, medical supplies, and as many of those bloody disgusting UER** packages as we could find space for. We didn't bother with radios, though; it was just the two of us, and they weren't likely to work down there anyway.

Before we set off, I checked in one last time to see if he was sure about what we were doing and whether it was worth the risk. He tells me that his partner was at the bottom, and that she was absolutely worth the risk. There wasn't much I could say to that; the damn fox was either insane or in love. **[He chuckles]** Not that there's much of a difference.

The lifts weren't an option. Neither was the lower causeway. Both were about as stable as a house of cards, and that wasn't accounting for the risk of booby traps.

 **Booby traps?**

Someone had tried to destroy Homestead. It wasn't a huge leap to imagine that they might have left some nasty surprises behind for anyone who tried to stop them. All it would take would be for one of us to step on a pressure plate or snag a trip wire, and the blast might've been enough to bring the whole bloody place down around our ears. That wouldn't make for much of a rescue, would it?

Homestead was originally a massive cave network before we moved in, and they'd formed sort of an upside down 'L' shape. The first thing we'd done was turn the cavern nearest to the surface into the top eight levels, then tunneled down and over to the next cavern, then the next after that. The top thirty-five levels were built that way, moving down and roughly north. At level thirty-six, the network dropped straight downward.

There was already a clear path through levels one through thirty, and we had decided that our best shot was to skirt the last six levels using the maintenance tunnels, then use Homestead's central lift shaft to make our descent. Even if we couldn't take the lifts themselves, the shaft they occupied provided a wide, straight, heavily reinforced route right to the bottom levels. If we could make it there, then making it to Wilde's partner – and anyone else who might be alive down there – would be as easy as falling down. **[He pauses]** So to speak.

Now, just because the maintenance passages were the fastest route, they were a far cry from being the safest. Most of them doubled as airflow pipes, which made it a fairly chilly in there. Then again, New Zooland isn't exactly a tropical paradise; the cold didn't really bother me. A bigger issue was that most of the passages had been badly warped and that made them a pretty tight squeeze, but I wasn't about to make a fuss about _that._

 **Why not?**

Because Wilde is nearly half-again my size. If I thought it was snug in there, it must have been practically claustrophobic for him. He got stuck more than once, but he never panicked. He'd work his way free, widen the opening if he could or strip off excess gear if he couldn't, and wriggle his way through. All without a word of complaint.

Added to the close quarters was also the not-insignificant risk of exposed electrical lines. Although Homestead's power grid had been shut off for obvious safety reasons, it only took one idiot to flip the on-switch. If one of those exposed cables was in contact with the steel walkway? Bam! Flash-fried mongoose with a side of fox flambé. It was just one of the many potentially-deadly things that we couldn't do a damn thing to protect ourselves from, and the many reasons that none of the rescue teams had been willing to risk using them before that.

In the end, what would have been a fifteen-minute walk down the main causeway ended up taking us over an hour, inching our way down to level thirty-six. When we finally arrived at the opening to the lift shaft, though, it turned out that great minds think alike; there was a Search & Rescue Tech already there and rigging up for a descent. For a second, I thought that while Wilde and I had been struggling our way down, the evacuation order had been lifted and SAR had beaten us there. Then I looked around and realized that the Tech was the only one there. More than that, but the open maintenance hatch across from us told me that he'd taken the same route we had; he'd just done it on the other side.

At first glance, he didn't look like much. Just a bleary-eyed ferret who was probably half-relying on muscle memory to clip his harness into place. Honestly, Wilde was practically on top of him before the little bugger even noticed the fox was there. Whether it was the sudden appearance of a larger predator or the ZDC coveralls, he looked a little spooked. At least he did before Wilde stuck out a paw and introduced himself like they were meeting at a party or something, then pointed over to me.

When he swung his head round, I realized that it was Michael Gatherpole. We'd met a few times before, usually when I was up at Black Rock running the SAR trainees through basic explosive response training. **[He laughs]** If you want the abridged version, it comes down to this; if you see something that looks like it might explode if you touch it, don't bloody touch it!

In any case, he was a good mammal with a solid reputation. If I had to pick an utterly exhausted mammal with an apparent death-wish to descend into Homestead with, I could do a lot worse than Gatherpole. Besides, he was no more or less wiped out than Wilde or myself.

 **How do you mean?**

I was practically dead on my feet by that point, and Wilde didn't look much better. I'm fairly certain that the three of us were running on not much more than a mix of stubbornness and good old-fashioned adrenaline. Looking back, I don't know what the hell I was thinking.

I'd been down there for the better part of twenty-four hours, and my body was doing its level-best to remind me that I wasn't as young as I used to be. I was cold, tired, damn near spent. My muscles burned, my bones ached, and I felt ready to collapse where I was standing. But every time I'd start to lag behind or be tempted to sit down, I'd start thinking about one other piece of wisdom my father handed down.

 **What was that?**

He told me that when you're at the ragged edge of your strength, you've spent that last ounce of willpower, and you think you've walked as far as you can possibly walk...just take one more step to be sure.

~o~o~o~

 *** 41st Light Mammal Infantry Battalion, 3rd Brigade Group, New Zooland Defence Force**

 **** UER (Universal Emergency Ration) – Synthetically produced bio-gel packs that can be safely consumed by any mammalian species, including obligate herbivores/carnivores, while meeting all necessary nutritional requirements.**


	7. Pt 6 - The Power Of Three

**The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective  
Part 6: The Power of Three  
** _by Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 **ooooo**

 **"** **The collapse may have separated us, but it'd take a hell of a lot more than that to keep us apart."**

Nicholas Wilde – Fox  
Pathfinder

 **ooooo**

 **As the afternoon light begins to fade, we turn and begin to make our way back. My train back to the city doesn't depart until later that night and, insisting that I can't leave Bunnyburrow on an empty stomach, he invites me to have dinner at his home.**

 **As we retrace our steps along the well-worn trail, he continues to tell his story.**

Looking back now, I think it's safe to say that the first thing I really associated with Judy Hopps was a truly exhausting level of enthusiasm. She threw herself completely into everything she did, determined to do her very best no matter what. It would have been adorable if it hadn't been so damn infuriating, and it's why I decided to mess with her during that classroom exercise.

The funny thing was, I hadn't really been _trying_ to piss her off; I just wanted to annoy her a little. I probably wouldn't have given it another thought if she hadn't come stomping up to me later on, practically vibrating with indignation. I'd actually been a little impressed, seeing a tiny rabbit getting right in the face of a larger predator without the slightest hesitation. For a second, I'd even felt a glimmer of respect at her readiness to defend herself, then her voice had taken on that oh-so-familiar patronizing tone as she went and called me _surprisingly articulate._ After that, I wrote her off as just another speciest bunny and resolved to ignore her from that point forward.

Somehow, though, we managed to clash constantly. I usually managed to come out the winner, in my humble opinion, but I've always been one of those poor mammals that finds a female _particularly_ attractive when she's angry with me; a trait that's had gotten me into trouble more than once. If you'd forced me back then – and I mean if you'd really put a gun to my head – I'd have begrudgingly admitted that she was very pretty. **[He smirks]** Y'know...for a bunny.

After we'd graduated and were officially partnered up, I discovered that the Pathfinders had been in negotiations with the ZDC about my unique situation. I couldn't exactly have a guard following me around on every recon, could I? Apparently, they went back and forth for a while about it, and the senior officer of the local detachment had some fairly draconian suggestions; he actually suggested muzzling me for Judy's safety. **[He shudders]** I'm not going to say that he was a speciest pig, but that's only because he was a bobcat. A very, very speciest bobcat Corrections Officer named Rourke. I never did learn his first name, but that was fine since I didn't actually care.

Eventually they'd settled on fitting me with one of those control anklets and giving Carrots a remote.

 **Control anklets?**

The use them in the federal penitentiary back in the city to prevent fights or escape attempts. If a mammal starts getting a little too feisty, the anklet delivers just enough of an electrical charge to paralyze the leg it's attached to. It's pretty hard to cause trouble when you're dragging your own leg around as dead weight.

 **That sounds like it would be very painful.**

Not really. I'd worn one for a little while, before they sent me out to the burrows. There was some big fight in the prison cafeteria, so the guards triggered all the anklets at once. My leg just went limp, a little like when your foot falls asleep. The other inmates called them 'stall collars' – y'know, like a stalled engine? Though you'd have to be a lunatic to wear one as an _actual_ collar.

Anyway, I decided not to point out that the anklet's signal wouldn't work underground, or that I could pop the lock on it in about twenty seconds. I definitely didn't mention that Carrots could defeat the lock in ten seconds flat and did so regularly. It was one of the things that kind of established our dynamic early on. Despite me being a fox, a felon, and – let's be honest – a male, she still trusted me enough to do away with her 'protective measure' without hesitation the second we were out of sight. That made me feel pretty good.

In the months that followed, the two of us blew right past each and every obstacle that stood in our way. One recon after another, our record went from acceptable, to noteworthy, to downright impressive. Despite my initial complaining, I found that her 'exhausting level of enthusiasm' was starting to rub off on me; it's not hard to enjoy what you're doing when the one you're doing it with is so passionate about it. Then, about four months after we'd finished training, we were sent out to this tiny little town in the foothills called Harvey's Hope.

Harvey's Hope was founded about ninety years ago by a rabbit named, you guessed it, Harvey Stewart. He got it into his head that he was going to mine for gold up there, and he convinced a couple hundred other rabbits that they could strike it rich by going with him. They were up there for forty years or so, and you know how much gold they found? Not so much as a flake in four decades. What they _did_ manage to do was dig so many underground tunnels that the town had to be evacuated. There was a legitimate concern that the whole thing would just collapse under its own weight.

Fast-forward fifty years; the town is still standing, so the Burrowers had decided to see if those tunnels can be salvaged and maybe put to better use. Before they could get started, though, Carrots and I would go in and see what the situation was. The two of us were pretty confident in our abilities by then, so we figured it'd be a cake-walk. **[He shakes his head]** Have you ever heard of the two-hundredth hour effect?

 **I haven't.**

The term comes up in a lot of different contexts, and it doesn't literally mean two-hundredth hour of anything. It's when you've been doing something just long enough to fool yourself into thinking that you aren't going to make a mistake. Better yet, it's that unbelievably dangerous place between confidence and experience where you're most likely to do something really stupid. Harvey's Hope was our two-hundredth hour, and it just about cost us our lives.

Our first mistake was assuming that the tunnel map from the County Archive was accurate. It showed us about eight-dozen tunnels all stacked on top of each other, when in reality it only contained about two-thirds of the existing tunnels. Our second mistake was assuming that the system was set up in some kind of order, but decades of unregulated mining had left behind a maze of crisscrossing passageways. We figured we'd be in & out inside of twenty-four hours and we wanted to move fast and light, so we decided we'd only bring three ration packs each. That was mistake number three, because you _always_ take enough food and water for twice as long as you expect to be down there.

And our fourth mistake, by far the most colossally stupid of the lot? We rushed in and didn't mark our trail properly. We were trying to live up to our own hype as the hot, new, all-star Pathfinder duo. We were already lost by the time we realized our map didn't match the tunnels. There was a lot of moisture down there, and we walked through a lot of puddles on our way; there was no scent trail to follow back.

 **What did you do?**

We very, _very_ slowly tried to retrace our steps. Whenever we reached a junction, we'd mark it with a number in fluorescent spray-paint; we each had a small can of it, which we _should_ have been using from the start. Every once in a while, we'd come up on a junction we'd already marked. Then we'd have to pull out the new map Carrots been drawing on the back of the old one and try to figure out where we'd made a wrong turn. Eventually we ran out of paint and had to start marking the crossing points with tools, scraping each number right into the rock.

By then we'd realized we were gonna be down there for a lot longer than we'd anticipated, so we started to conserve our rations. Even so, they didn't last the whole time. We were smart enough to bring extra headlamp batteries, at least, but even they just barely saw us through.

 **How long did it take to get back to the surface?**

Four days.

By the time we reached the end of the fourth, neither of us had eaten in thirty-six hours. Even though there was enough water in the caverns to stay hydrated, we'd run out of purifier drops and drinking the water unpurified was too risky. We were trying to conserve whatever was left in our hydration packs, but they were getting pretty low. Her headlamp was already dead and mine was on its last legs; the only reason it was still useful was because my eyes could navigate by the dim light. I picked my way along each tunnel as carefully as I could, constantly aware of Carrots' tight grip on my tail as she followed blindly behind me.

She'd gotten so little sleep by then that she'd started hearing things. Sometimes she'd just stop and tug my tail gently, telling me she could hear voices calling our names. I'd tell her it was just her imagination again, and the dejected look she'd get on her face broke my heart every single time. To make matters worse, my senses were starting to play tricks on me, too. I was becoming increasingly aware of little flickers of movement on the edges of my vision. At that point, I still knew that there was actually nothing there, but I didn't know how long I had before I was in the same place as Judy, unable to separate the hallucinations from reality.

When I started hearing whispers as well, I remember thinking 'Well, this is it. I'm finally cracking up'. Then I felt that familiar tug on my tail. Carrots told me she could hear someone calling our names, and this time she was really sure. I almost corrected her again before I realized that I'd been hearing the same thing; faraway shouts that seemed to be getting closer.

 **How could you be sure it was real?**

 **[He shrugs]** Nothing to lose at that point. We only had about an hour left before the last headlamp died, and even my eyes need _some_ light to work with. So, I let Carrots take the lead, trusting those ears of hers to guide us to safety. It took less than ten minutes for the search party to find us, and I was so happy to see them that I think I actually cried a little before I passed out cold.

 **Do you feel like the experience had a lasting effect on the two of you?**

Absolutely, one-hundred percent.

I mean, we'd already been close friends, but Harvey's Hope felt like it had strengthened that bond. Forged it into something much stronger. From that day onward, each of us would've followed the other one into hell without question. We watched over each other, and I absolutely trusted her with my life. I followed her into some truly terrifying situations, even after Harvey's Hope, and did so with a smile. Then, after being partners for over a year, it felt like she'd managed to punch a hole in those foundations with one little comment.

Apparently, I 'wasn't like other predators'.

Somehow, that had stung worse that any anti-predator or anti-fox slur ever had. It made me feel like despite all my hard work and all my accomplishments, I was still only accepted by virtue of my association to Judy. It made me feel like she saw me as a pet. Like I was somehow _tamed_.

I mean, I know that _wasn't_ what she was saying. She was just trying to stand up for me, but I'd been so angry at the idea of being a kept mammal that I'd lashed out at her. I don't really remember what I said, but when I'd walked away I didn't need to look back to imagine the hurt expression on her face.

My little fit of righteous indignation had been sweet, but it wore off pretty quickly. I'd barely made it back to the surface before I realized how badly I'd overreacted. I wanted to talk to her, try to explain how her words had hurt me, even if she obviously hadn't meant it the way it had sounded. I wanted to show her that even as upset as I was, I still wanted her to be in my life. Instead my damned pride had me sulking outside the main causeway entrance when the ground shook under my feet and the sound of alarms filled my ears.

I just kept staring into the causeway, waiting for her to come running up. The more minutes that passed, though, the more strength it took not to run into the tunnel to find her; more than I knew I possessed, honestly. I forced myself to stay frozen in place. Forced myself to remember that running headlong into an unknown situation might just get us both killed. I knew that if I went after her in that moment, I wouldn't stop until I found her.

I heard some mammal shouting orders into a megaphone, but it wasn't until the Chauve-Souris brothers seemed to appear in front of me that I realized I'd been standing there for almost twenty minutes. Pierre was the one who recruited me for the Pathfinders in the first place. I think I mentioned that earlier? They kept asking if I was okay, where Carrots was, if I knew what was going on. I was thinking about how stupid it was to ask if I was okay. Of _course_ I wasn't okay, because I didn't know where she was _or_ what the hell was going on.

I must've said something to satisfy them, because the next thing I remember is Andre dragging me toward this loose gaggle of specialists and team leads, all of whom were trying to get a bead on the situation. I tried to focus on the conversation, really, but I'd get distracted every time another group of Burrowers came stumbling out; it wasn't until I heard someone say the words 'going back in' that they had my attention. That's when I learned that Pierre, Andre and I were each being assigned a team of Burrowers to lead. We'd take point, they'd follow behind.

 **The ZDC guards let you go back in unescorted?**

 **[He snorts]** I wish.

I was just about to the tunnel when my leg went numb and I hit the ground. Rourke sidles up in front of me, trigger remote in paw, and starts going on about how I was still a prisoner of the Zootopia Department of Corrections, then went so far as to say that I wouldn't be going anywhere without armed guards present, so I 'couldn't cause any more trouble'. **[He shakes his head]** What an asshole. I'd have told him to shove it, but if I was going to be of any use at all, I'd need the use of both legs. We were already wasting time; so I could play his game if I had to.

The next sixteen hours somehow both dragged out and passed in a blur. Physically, I felt like I was on autopilot. Wait for the diggers to break through into a chamber, recon the chamber, let them know it was clear, yell for Medics if needed, then wait for the Bashers to bolster up the structure before moving forward. Lather, rinse, repeat. Mentally, though, I just kept going over my last few minutes with Carrots. What she'd said, and why it'd hurt so much. What I'd said, and why I'd felt the need to lash out at her when I'd had things a hundred times worse said to me, probably more times than I could count. I was my very own one-mammal debate team; I'd come up with a theory, think on it for a little while, dismiss it, and move on to the next.

 **Such as?**

Well, my first theory was a fairly simple one that I'd cooked up early on: I was upset because I'd thought she was above that kind of thinking, and it had shaken me to see her knocked off of the pedestal I'd placed her on. The more I mulled that over, though, the more I had to admit that the idea didn't really hold water. I knew for a _fact_ that Carrots was just as biased as the next mammal. What made her special was that she was working hard to rid herself of those biases, but nobody's perfect. I couldn't have placed Judy on a pedestal. She was just as flawed as the next mammal; I just happened to see past her flaws.

Another theory came to me when one of the Diggers convinced me to take a break. Well, when I say convinced, I mean he forced me to eat something and lay down for an hour, threatening to sit on me if I tried to get up. I was stretched out on top of a few crates – and definitely _not_ pouting – when I got to thinking that maybe Judy's words had stung because deep-down I thought I was different. That, in her mind, speciest stereotypes just didn't apply to me. That asinine idea got shot down even more quickly than the first. I gotten angry because she _did_ think I was different, not the other way around.

Over the next seven hours, I rejected another dozen half-formed explanations for my reaction. The real answer took its time getting to me. It let me drop my guard, get all complacent. Then, right when I was about to go on what had to be my hundredth recon, it swaggered over and clocked me right in the jaw with something _so glaringly obvious_ that I was embarrassed it took me so long to figure out; I'd fallen head over tail in love with her. I didn't want to be special or different to her; I just wanted to be Nick. _Her_ Nick. **[He groans]** Oh my _gods_ , does that ever sound corny out loud. You're not going to publish that, are you?

 **Yup.**

And the Herald's readership is...

 **About three million mammals.**

 **[He sighs]** Super.

Anyway, when I tell you that the realization that I was in love with my partner and best friend stunned me, I'm not exaggerating. Apparently, I halted mid-step and just stood there like the village idiot for a solid minute, looking for all the world like I was trying to figure out the square root of a potato. Someone had to whack me on the shoulder to snap me out of it, and because the gods like to screw with me from time to time, that was right when the evacuation call came down.

I'd been against the idea of leaving _before_ my sudden epiphany, and I definitely wasn't willing to after it. Thee guards had to physically drag me back up the causeway, and you'd better believe I was kicking and screaming the whole time. Rourke activated the anklet, and I was still trying to fight my way back with my other three limbs. I'm honestly surprised they didn't dart me on the spot.

Rourke got in my face again, said he'd shut off the anklet if I started behaving. He even said he'd see about getting me permission to go back in. I have no idea why I believed him, but I did. Once I was back on my feet, though, the bastard actually sucker punched me! Who _does_ that? Everything goes kinda hazy after that. I _do_ remember tackling him to the ground, but before I had the chance to figure out what to do next, I was back on my feet and there was a mongoose whacking me upside the head.

 **Was that Mikaere Ngata?**

Yup. That mammal has a grip like an iron vice, too. Even if I _was_ the larger one, there was no way I'd have been able to fight my way loose. He took a long look at me, then suddenly he shoved me behind him and moved to block the guards from following. I didn't know what he'd seen when he looked me in the eye or why he was helping me, but I definitely knew when to take a hint.

I tore off down the tunnel like my tail was on fire, the whole time expecting to feel my leg shut down. It didn't happen though, and by the time I reached the supply shed where Rourke had thrown my gear on the way out I was well outside the remote's range.

I figured I only had a few minutes before someone came after me, so I didn't want to hang around longer than I had to. As soon as I found my harness, I pulled out my multitool and popped the lock on the anklet. I was just standing up when I heard someone behind me, and I turn to find Mikaere sidling right up. For a minute, I thought he'd changed his mind and was there to take me back up. If he was, I wasn't planning to make it easy. As it turned out, he'd decided that I could use some backup. Good thing, too, because I don't think I could've made it to the bottom alone.

 **How did the two of you plan to reach the bottom?**

By taking the crazy-mammal's route. It'd taken hundreds of Burrowers nearly seventeen hours to make it was far as level thirty, and we had to get to level thirty-six. That was why the maintenance passages that threaded their way through the superstructure were our first step. Then it was down the main elevator shaft, through the facilities area, down the lower cargo lift shaft and on to the forward tunnel. That was the leading edge of the excavation, where the diggers had broken through to the caverns Carrots and I had been brought in to recon.

I might not have known exactly where she was, but I knew it'd be somewhere along that path.

 **What was it like to travel in the maintenance passages?**

It was pretty dangerous and as far from comfortable as you could get. They'd been badly warped in a few places, and that made for some tight quarters. I got stuck a few times, but that kind of thing happens a lot when you're a Pathfinder. It was more annoying than anything else. To make matters worse, most of the passages doubled as ventilation ducts and the moving air made it pretty cold in there. I wasn't about to start whining about it, though.

 **Why is that?**

Because Mikaere wasn't saying a word about it, even though mongooses - mongeese? - are from really warm climates. I might have been uncomfortable, but it was probably a lot worse for him.

Anyway, the top of the shaft is where we met Mike Gatherpole. He was with Tri-Burrow Search & Rescue and, like Mikaere and I, had decided to forgo the evacuation in favor of the fun-filled crazy-train we were calling a rescue mission. He'd started heading down before us and had made much better time; by the time we got there, he'd already prepped the descenders and was in the process of clipping in.

I'm not one to turn help away, so I introduced myself as I was rigging my own harness to one of the descent lines. He didn't seem too sure about me, not that I blame him. Unexpected foxes in prison uniforms tend to have that effect on mammals. Luckily, he already knew Mikaere; that helped me sidestep most of the 'getting to know you' bit.

 **What was the descent like?**

Terrifying.

The main shaft was about fifty metres across and nearly four hundred metres down with a wide-open space at the bottom. Three elevator scaffolds ran along the sides, which were relatively smooth, and the rest was empty so that you could lower supplies with the heavy cranes and fixed lines. That's what we were using; the fixed lines that were anchored into the rock. It was a good thing they were there, too. There wasn't a climbing rope in the _world_ long enough for that drop.

On any other day, it would have been an easy rappel. A long one, but technically easy. With the power out, though, our headlamps only let us see so far. I had the best night vision of the three of us, and even I could barely see the other side; the shaft itself just looked like a bottomless black void. Mike threw a flare in to give us a visual reference, and the longer it fell the more nervous I got. Give me some tiny little crevice to squeeze through anytime, because this is one fox who really doesn't love heights. I just kept my eyes on my rope, pretended it was only a training wall, and took it one bound at a time. When we finally got to the bottom, all we had to do was unclip from the lines and walk away.

When we stepped into the open area, though... **[He pauses]** I'd known that there'd probably be a mess down there, but I hadn't expected to see...uh...I guess there'd been maybe a hundred mammals at the bottom of the elevator shaft? They were all huddled around the base of the scaffolding. They must've heard the explosions, because it looked like they'd all been rushing for the elevator... **[He trails off, and the two of us walk in silence for a few minutes.]**

 **If you'd rather not talk about it...**

No, I'm okay. It's just not the most pleasant thing to remember.

See, here's the thing; Mike had over a decade with search & rescue at that point and Mikaere was a combat veteran. They had some experience dealing with that kind of thing. Me, though? I was just some fox from the city, and I think the worst injury I'd seen before Homestead was a broken wrist. I'd definitely never seen a dead body, so it figures that the first thing my eyes landed on would be a rabbit. She was a grey doe with coloring close enough to... I thought it was Carrots. If I'd taken a moment to really look, I'd have realized that the uniform was all wrong. But right in that second, all I saw was that poor broken bunny, thought it was Judy, and just about lost it.

I rushed forward, grabbed her by the sleeve and turned her over. I'll remember those blue eyes till the day I die; they were the only part of her face that was left. Everything else was just... **[He pauses again, taking a deep breath]** There's nothing in the world that can prepare you to see something like that; a mammal that's just been...smashed.

I managed to scramble away before I started puking, and it just kept coming till there was nothing left but dry-heaves. **[He smiles slightly]** The guys were really great about it. They didn't tease me or tell me to toughen up. While Mike was checking for survivors, Mikaere just walked me off to the side, handed me his canteen, and let me take the time I needed to pull myself together.

 **Were there any? Survivors, I mean?**

No. Too much falling debris. **[He sighs]** Mike checked every one of them, though. He even checked to see if any of them had been Pathfinders; none of them were. I felt guilty about how relieved I was by that.

 **Where did you go from there?**

The only thing we could do; we kept moving. There were still about two-hundred meters horizontal to cover before we even got to our second descent. We were on the clock, already twenty hours in, and searching for survivors the whole way. I wasn't naïve; I knew what I was likely to find down there. The odds weren't in her favor, but by then I just didn't care. I wasn't going to leave Judy behind. I couldn't even bear the thought of it.

One way or another, whether I found her alive or...not, I was going to carry her back into the light if it was the last thing I ever did.


	8. Pt 7 - Desperate Measures

**The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective  
Part 7: Desperate Measures  
** _by Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 **ooooo**

 **"** **There are three kinds of mammals down there. The ones that dig, the ones that say** ** _where_** **to dig, and the ones that save the first two after they get lost."**

Michael Gatherpole – Ferret  
Tri-Burrow Search & Rescue Technician

 **ooooo**

 **With its grey skies and muddy landscape, the training range used by Tri-Burrow Search & Rescue could be mistaken for a wartime battlefield. Located in the foothills of the Redwall mountain range and just forty miles north of Bunnyburrow, these grounds have been designed to simulate the harsh conditions that often accompany emergency rescue operations.**

 **My guide,** **Mike Gatherpole** **, moves purposefully along the gravel path leading from the small cluster of buildings near the parking lot and into the training grounds.** **Gatherpole** **has been with Tri-Burrow Search & Rescue for over fifteen years and has spent the last two training the next generation of underground rescue technicians.**

 **Although the rain has not let up since my arrival, he does not seem to notice.**

Search and rescue work may look exciting from the outside, but the truth is it rarely lives up to the hype. A lot of kids sign up expecting non-stop adventure, and at least half of them end up quitting when they discover that ninety-five percent of their time will just be spent training or just waiting for something to go wrong.

That being said, the other five percent can be the kind of intensity that leaves your tail twitching for days afterward.

 **Is that what made you stay?**

Well, it sure as hell wasn't the pay. **[He chuckles]** Honestly, I stayed because I'm good at this. Doing something crazy to save another mammal came naturally to me. I guess I could have become some kind of masked crime-fighter, but this seemed like a more stable career path. The benefits are a lot better, too. I'm pretty sure that vigilantes don't get dental.

In all seriousness, it's because I believe in the work we do. In the city they've got cops, paramedics, and firefighters if you end up in a life or death situation. Out in the wilderness, though? Deep in the Redwalls? In a collapsing cavern? Those are the times when Search and Rescue has your back, and that's why Tri-Burrow SAR trains to be the best. In my not-so-humble opinion, the Black Rock Training Range is one of the top SAR schools in the world. The facilities here are second-to-none, and we can effectively simulate virtually any high-risk environment that we might be called to operate in; from high alpine rockfaces, to swamps, to – naturally – underground caverns.

 **I thought the name of this facility was the...**

Black Rock Training Range.

 **But the sign at the entrance said...**

 _Black. Rock. Training. Range._

 **...of course. My apologies.**

 **[He rolls his eyes]** Don't worry about it.

Anyway, the truth is that even with our first-rate training, Homestead caught us completely unprepared. We just didn't have the personnel for an operation that size. By that point, Tri-Burrow SAR was only about a hundred and fifty strong, and a third of those were administrative or support personnel.

 **By that point?**

Yup. Back in the day, SAR had more applicants and funding than they knew what to do with.

After St. Claire, if some politician wanted to score points off his opponent, all he had to do was claim the other guy wanted to cut the SAR budget. I was a kid back then, but I can still remember the ads on TV. It was usually some ominous music and a bunch of black and white photos from the St. Claire rescue operation, then some concerned-sounding voice asking, 'Does what's-his-name _really_ care about your family?'. What a bunch of jerk-offs.

It worked, though. Our budget went up with every election, and by the early nineties there were nearly a thousand SAR Techs ready to deploy at a moment's notice. Can you imagine that?

 **What changed?**

 **[He shrugs]** Mammals forget. Give them enough time and distance, and even the most terrifying dangers will be shrugged off as something that could never _really_ happen. They don't want to be scared, so they pretend that the scary things aren't there. One of the biggest reasons that organizations like ours exist is because most mammals, even the smart ones, refuse to believe that it can happen to them. Now that same idea was tricking them into thinking that they didn't really _need_ search and rescue in the first place.

It's kinda funny when you think about it. The idea of getting rid of search and rescue made mammals feel safer.

Suddenly, the same politicians who'd been scoring votes by supporting us were saying that the SAR budget was a waste of money. They said that the money should be going toward safety equipment and inspections. One municipal councilor went so far as to call us 'government-funded paranoia'.

Every year that passed without a major incident we got a little less funding. When I joined up in oh-three, we were down to four-hundred techs. By Homestead, we'd been nickeled and dimed down to minimum operational standards. That was just enough personnel to cover the usual call-outs like minor collapses or small tunnel fires.

 **But not enough for the Homestead collapse?**

Not even close. And to make matters worse, we couldn't even use all the personnel we _did_ have.

 **Why was that?**

Well to start with, there were the thirty-five recruits in our training section who couldn't go into the tunnels. They were good mammals - smart, hard-working and damn motivated - but they were unqualified. If we sent them down, they were just as likely to end up needing rescue themselves. We put them to work on the surface doing support duty, but they still couldn't make much of an impact.

The really frustrating one was the active reserve. By law, we had to have at least fifteen deployment-ready techs on stand-by. You bet your ass no one wanted that duty, but they needed to be held back in case, gods-freaking-forbid, something _else_ went wrong. You know what they say about eggs and baskets, right?

That left about fifty qualified techs, including ol' Sawtooth himself, who were actually fit to deploy. Three shifts of seventeen rescuers each. Four hours in the hole, four hours repairing and maintaining the next shift's equipment, four hours sleep, repeat. At least, that was official protocol. In reality, I was down there from the moment I landed on site. The only time I stopped was to grab a quick bite to eat, or to spend a few minutes lying down on whatever flat surface wasn't in use that moment.

That kind of physical work is brutally punishing. You stop complaining about the pain after a few hours of it, but that's just because you can't really remember what _not_ hurting feels like.

 **Your superiors worked you that hard?**

Of course not. But they didn't really do anything to stop us, either. Every now and then someone would gather a bunch of us together and give some lecture about being responsible and not overtaxing ourselves. There was never any fire behind it, though. They knew who they were talking to and what to expect. Honestly, considering Sawtooth was heading up operations himself, I'm surprised they even bothered.

 **Sawtooth?**

Victor Odynski. He's the Tri-Burrow Search & Rescue Field Commander.

Easily one of the toughest mammals I've ever met. Would you believe that he was seventy-one at Homestead? Seventy-one! To look at him, you wouldn't have figured him for a day over forty, and he still kept up with rescuers in their twenties! You know they say he got his nickname by chewing through a table faster than a beaver, just to settle a bet? There isn't a rescuer alive who isn't a little in awe of him, and I'm pretty sure some of them would've sprinted into Homestead blindfolded if they thought it'd earn them an impressed nod.

I wish I could've seen him in action that day, but I was doing solo descents instead; we all were. As much as it ran against both regulations and common-freaking-sense, SAR was stretched too thin for us to go in by pairs. It spooked the hell out of me every time, even if I was certain that it was only a dozen or so feet. Something about going into the darkness alone always sent shivers up my tail. Combined with fatigue, it made for a couple of painfully embarrassing moments.

There was one time that I went down through a narrow opening into a pitch-black chamber. I fired up my headlamp as soon as I hit the bottom, and this poor frightened Burrower came rushing at me out of the dark, laughing joyfully. And how did I respond? By screeching like a frightened kit and trying to scramble back up the rope. I think that if he hadn't been so glad to see me, he might've been a little offended.

 **Where were you when the call to evacuate came down?**

The diggers I was assigned to had just broken into another tunnel when we got orders to return to the surface. They didn't explain why at the time; at least, not to everyone. Looking at the team leads, though, you could see something in their eyes. They were trying their best to hide it, but it was definitely fear. They had everyone scrambling out of there in a heartbeat.

 **But you didn't leave with the others.**

Nope. I just stood there while the mammals around me bolted for the door. I knew I should be going with them, but I just couldn't get my feet to move. Eventually I got on my radio and called up to SAR command. They told me to report my position, I told 'em, and suddenly this radio operator starts yelling at me to get outta there. I told 'em that I couldn't; better believe _that_ got their attention.

My radio starts squawking again, but it's not the radio operator this time, it's Sawtooth himself. Anyone could recognize that voice. Probably the only mammal his size in the world with a voice that deep. He asks for my status, and whether or not I'm hurt. I tell him I'm fine. He asks why I wasn't following orders and returning to the surface, and I told him that I didn't have a reason; I just couldn't. It was the truth, too. I had no idea why my feet were frozen, or why I was so dead-set on staying down there.

Then he comes back and says – I swear, I'll never forget this as long as I live – he says to me, 'Well, if you're gonna be down there anyway, you might as well get back to work.'

He and I have worked together for a long time, but it still blows my mind that _he_ knew what I was thinking before _I_ did. Just like that, I knew that I couldn't leave while I still had a job to do. I know that sounds like a line from a bad movie, but that's honestly what I was thinking. I wasn't a member of Tri-Burrows Sit & Wait. I had a job to do, and I was damn well gonna do it.

I got back on the radio and reported that I was headed for the bottom. Sawtooth responds by telling me to report to him personally in eight hours, assuring me that if I disobeyed _that_ order he'd come down to kick my ass personally. The crazy thing is, I'm pretty sure he would have done it, too.

 **How did you get to the bottom?**

The only way to get to the lower levels was the central elevator shaft via the maintenance passages. The lower causeway was a cave-in waiting to happen and taking the actual elevators would have been the next best thing to suicide – not that there'd been any power to run them anyway.

Homestead's were perfectly constructed for that; instead of concrete or steel, the passages around the outside of the burrow were made of some kind of flexible material that could withstand tremendous amounts of pressure before they breached. The downside was that they got awfully narrow in a few spots, but ferrets are good with small spaces. Since Homestead was still unfinished, the passageways were all unlocked. That made the route to the elevator shaft a dead straightaway.

Turns out I wasn't the only one to come up with that brilliant idea.

As I was getting in position and hooking up to one of the fixed descent lines, I was suddenly hit with this intense wave of exhaustion. It felt like I was running on empty, and I was only half-aware of another pair of mammals showing up until one of them started securing themselves to the next line over. Maybe I was a little surprised that a second rescuer was even down there; even if they hadn't all been evacuated, it's not like we had personnel to spare. I was just getting ready to make the descent when I took a good look at the mammal going in beside me and realized they weren't a rescuer at all. He was wearing orange, all right, but the lettering on his back didn't say Search and Rescue; it said Department of Corrections. That gave me a scare, believe you me.

Then I saw the Pathfinder patch and I knew I had a choice. I could go into that hole alone with no idea what the conditions might be, or I could go in with a predator I'd never met, who'd been convicted of a crime I knew nothing about, and who was part of the only group crazier than Tri-Burrow Search and Rescue.

I was still processing that when he holds out his paw and says 'Nick', like we were just meeting on the street. Then he angled his head to where another mammal was setting up on a third descent line. I didn't need an introduction to recognize Mikaere Ngata. I'd worked with the mongoose a few times before Homestead and had a lot of respect for him. He was a solid mammal, and if he was alright with the fox going in then that was good enough for me.

It was a long way down. Even thinking about it makes me dizzy. I mean, ferrets don't exactly have killer depth perception, but I know a long fall when I see one.

It was as far away from a typical descent as you could possibly get. Homestead was built into a naturally formed cave network – one of the deepest ever found. The lowest caverns were, like, two thousand metres down*. That's a little more than a mile. We weren't doing the whole way at once, but when I dropped a flare in to visually mark the distance, it still fell for so long that I was actually starting to wonder if it was ever going to hit the ground.

If it weren't for the fixed descent lines, we couldn't have gone anywhere.

 **Fixed descent lines?**

Emergency cable spools that were anchored into the walls at the top on the main shaft. All we had to do was clip in and rappel down. Getting back to the top was different story altogether. If we were very, very, _very_ lucky, they'd have the motorized winches running by the time we were ready to come back up. None of us loved the idea of using manual ascenders all the way.

 **Manual ascenders? What are those?**

Pretty much what the sound like; tools that help with ascending a rope.

 **How so?**

Seriously? Do you wanna hear about Homestead or are you just looking for a free climbing lesson?

 **It's for the readers.**

Uh-huh. Alright, but this is the last one. You can just Zoogle the rest.

 **Deal.**

So, an ascender has got a one-way cam inside that only allows a rope to slide through it in one direction. If the rope tried going the other way, the ascender locks in place. Some of the old-timers aren't really fans of 'em, but they're faster and a lot easier to use than friction knots. Just link one to your harness and use a couple carabiners and a piece of webbing to create a sling on the other. Then clip them onto the rope with the harness one on top, put your foot in the sling, and inch-worm your way on up. Stand up in the sling, slide the top ascender up, sit back into your harness, and slide the bottom ascender up to meet the first.

Now repeat until you can't feel your arms anymore.

 **That sounds...taxing.**

Yeah? Tell you what; if you ever get the chance, go tie off a length of rope so you've got about thirty feet hanging down. Then put on a pack that's about the same weight as yourself, rig up a pair of ascenders, and work your way up that rope about a hundred times in a row.

It's about a million times better that trying a climbing ascent with a wounded mammal in tow, but it sure as hell wouldn't be my first choice.

 **I'll take your word for it.**

 **[He laughs]** You do that. Now if I could...?

 **Of course.**

The descent went smoothly enough, I guess. At least, we made it to the bottom without any broken bones. What we found, though... **[He shakes his head]** A lot of mammals got caught in a rockfall. It was pretty gruesome. Wilde took it the worst, not that I blame him. He handled it a lot better than I did, the first time I ever saw a dead mammal.

I'd only been with Search and Rescue about a year when a kid from a Junior Ranger Scout troop went missing in the Redwalls. He'd wandered away from his group while they were on a hike and was out of sight by the time the troop leader noticed. The search lasted eight days before he was found dead at the bottom of a rock fissure. I was the only one small enough to get in there and recover his remains.

The thing is, I was in the Junior Rangers when I was a kid. They helped make me the mammal I am today. When I got to the bottom, it just took one look at the Junior Ranger uniform and I started bawling my eyes out. It was almost ten minutes before I got ahold of myself enough to do my job. I thought for sure that the other rescuers were gonna start giving me shit for breaking down like that, but my Team Lead just asked if I was okay and told me that he'd be around if I needed someone to talk to. That's just how it is, though. We're all mammals, and we all process stuff like that in our own way.

Ngata took Wilde off to the side, while I got to work checking for survivors. I wasn't hopeful, though. It'd been nearly twenty hours since those bombs had gone off. Even if someone had survived the rockfall, it wasn't too likely they'd have lasted this long. We kept checking for survivors as we went, but we didn't find any. Just a few more bodies. There were less than I would have expected, but they still didn't bode well for Wilde's partner.

 **What were the conditions like?**

Pretty nasty. Once we left the bottom of the shaft we found ourselves bogged down in this deep mud. A piece of debris must've breached the fire suppression sprinklers because the entire system had emptied into the tunnel and mixed with the dust from the collapse above. **[He shivers]** I hated wading through that stuff. It was just thick enough to make every movement harder than it had to be. It felt like my muscles were burning and freezing at the same time. It was knee-deep for Wilde, but I was in up to my waist. The ground was pretty uneven, too, and we kept tripping. I ended up getting a full mud bath a few times.

Eventually the mud gave way to dry tunnels, but it still got colder the further in we went. Normally there would have been heaters running, but those had shut down along with the lights. That's why air ventilation systems are legally required to have a backup power source. The tunnels got a lot more rudimentary, too. Those were going to be the facilities and infrastructure levels. When the burrow was finished, that was where you'd find things like the power reactors, the water control hub, and the burrow operations center. Even finished, they'd only have the most basic concrete and steel passages. That made it _really_ tough to spot the cracks and deformities that'll tip you off to an instability.

When a passage is compromised, anything could set it off. You could send a family of elephants through and not see so much as a pebble fall, but if a mouse kicks the wrong wall at the wrong angle? Bam! **[He slaps his paws together]** You're done.

We were about halfway to the cargo lift shaft when the figurative mouse kicked the figurative wall, and I almost got not-figuratively killed. The only warning we got was a sharp crack just under our feet, then the floor just collapsed right out from under me. I would've died of Ngata hadn't been there; he lunged forward faster than any mammal I've ever seen, grabbed me by the harness and yanked me out back onto solid ground. Thank the gods for mongoose reflexes, right?

We all scrambled backwards as the floor crumbled away. All I could see beyond that was this deep, endless expanse of darkness. It took us a minute to realize that our route to the cargo lift shaft had taken us over the primary drainage sump. We couldn't actually see it - way too dark for that - but we could sure feel it. It was just this massive emptiness beneath us. It hadn't rained in a couple of weeks; but there was still the water flow used to keep the dust down in the tunnels; we could hear it trickling downward.

 **What's a drainage sump?**

The lowest part of Homestead's flood prevention system. Well, technically it's the second lowest part. It was where all the drainage water from the entire burrow went; picture a gigantic funnel about a hundred metres across and just as deep.

When the Burrowers originally scoped out the caverns that Homestead would be built in, they'd discovered that the lowest caverns weren't exactly flooded; there was actually a moving current. They tossed in a few underwater transmitters to see where it went, and you know what they found out? The water flowed underground for about seven hundred miles, all the way to the ocean! That was what kept the caverns from filling up. Apparently, there was some big fuss about it being a natural wonder or something. **[He shrugs]** Anyway, the burrow designers took advantage of that by adding massive reinforced pipes that wrapped their way around the superstructure, each one emptying into this funnel-shaped pit and down to the lowest caverns. You gotta hand it to them; those guys don't miss a trick. You could dump every last drop of Willow Lake into Homestead and it'd be no more of a threat to the burrow than a light rainstorm.

We were all pretty spooked. We were also facing a much bigger problem; the tunnel we'd been planning to take now had a giant freaking hole in the floor. It was at least ten metres from our side to the other. Even if one of us was capable of jumping that far, the ceiling wasn't anywhere close to being high enough. We would have needed to backtrack for nearly twenty minutes to find any kind of alternative, and that was assuming that none of the secondary tunnels were blocked. That was when Wilde goes insane and suggests we just tyro right over the hole.

 **Tyro?**

Tyrolean traverse. Basically, you anchor a line between two points, clip your climbing harness to it, and pull yourself from one end to the other. Kinda like a zip-line without the gravity assist. It would have been a good idea if it weren't for two tiny little details; it's kinda tough to anchor both ends of the rope when we were all stuck on one end, and we didn't actually have anything to anchor the line with. When I brought that little hiccup in his plan to his attention, he just pointed to an overturned tool cart on the other side and said he'd take care of it.

It took me a second to realize what he was saying. That he was volunteering to do a ten metre inverted climb to retrieve the hardware we'd need to anchor a tyro line over what was functionally a bottomless pit. If something went wrong, we'd just have to watch him vanish down into the black, and there wouldn't have been a thing we could do to save him. **[He shakes his head]** I tell ya, there's crazy and then there's _Pathfinder_ crazy.

We argued about it for a minute, but it's not like we were spoiled for options. Any alternative would be a complete shot in the dark, and time was definitely _not_ on our side. He secured our climbing rope to the back of his harness while Mikaere and I took hold of the other end. We kept as tight of a grip on it as we could manage, but like most of our climbing gear, it was covered in mud. Even if it might've been too slippery to hold on to, it was way too risky to clip it to our own harnesses. He was the heaviest of us; if he fell there was a decent chance he'd pull us down with him.

 **As the smallest of the three, wouldn't it have made more sense for you to go?**

Yeah, except that I sucked at inverted climbing. I still do, if I'm being honest. **[He shrugs]** You need a long reach, and ferret arms just aren't up to the task. I hated admitting that at the time, but the middle of a rescue is no time for pride. It was the same way for Mikaere; he wanted to volunteer, but he knew he didn't have that level of climbing experience.

Once he had a route planned out, Wilde clambered up the wall, transitioning to the roof, then slowly started moving across the gap one paw at a time. I swear that fox is part gecko or something. He definitely knew what he was doing, but it was still tough to watch; there were a few times one of his paws would slip, and I swear I felt my throat close off. He'd always manage to recover, find another paw-hold, and keep going. I remember it was around the halfway mark when his multitool slipped out of his pocket; I kept waiting to hear it hit the bottom, but the sound never came.

He only had a couple of metres left when he stopped moving forward. Mikaere asked what was wrong, and Wilde shouted back that he'd managed to get a couple of his claws wedged into a tiny little crack and he wasn't able to get them out. He started tugging at it, but it's a massive effort to hold yourself upside down like that and his other three limbs had already started trembling. He knew he wasn't going to be able to hold on much longer, so he just... **[He shudders]**...he just _yanked_ his paw free. He lost two claws in the process, one of them permanently. Ripped 'em right out. Then he kept using the injured paw to make it the last two metres. I used to think that Odynski was the most hardcore mammal I knew. If you put Wilde's partner in danger, though, that fox could give Sawtooth a real run for his money.

Once he had his feet back on the ground, he took a minute to bandage up his injured fingers before securing the rope to an exposed structural beam, then stuffed the hardware we needed in a small bag and threw it over to us. We got the tyro line anchored in the rock on either side, then the two of us each went paw over paw across the gap. I forced myself not to look down until I was on the other side.

I checked over Wilde's paw before we got moving again. He'd done an okay job of wrapping it up, but I still unwrapped it to clean the injury and re-bandage it properly. The damage wasn't _too_ bad; more painful than debilitating. I had some painkillers in my jump bag; I knew he'd refuse, but I offered anyway. Then we double checked the anchor, figuring that was still going to be our way home, and got a move on.

I was starting to get a little weirded out that we hadn't found any survivors and only a couple of bodies since we'd left the elevator shaft, and that didn't change as we made our way to the cargo lift.

 **How deep was the cargo lift, compared to the central elevator?**

You can't really compare the two. Unlike the elevator shaft, the cargo lift operated on a steep slope - about forty-five degrees – and was only about a fifty metres long; just enough to get any heavy equipment down to the lowest levels. Not exactly a Sunday stroll, but not so bad that we couldn't handle it. All we had to do was stick close to the rails and make sure not to lose our footing.

We kept our pace slow and safe, but it still only took us about ten minutes to reach the bottom. That's where we found the actual cargo lift car. Its brakes must've come loose in the collapse; it looked like it'd fallen the full length of the shaft and crashed at the bottom. It was laying on its side and half buried in rocks, blocking the tunnel altogether. I was just doing the math in my head on how long it'd take us to turn around and find another way when Mikaere stepped up and started fiddling around with the car's undercarriage. A minute later there's this loud clang and he turns around – grinning like an idiot - to reveal the maintenance access panel he'd gotten open.

He told me and Wilde there was another hatch on the roof of the car and led us inside. We managed to squeeze our way through the car, but – of course - the roof hatch was locked. That was frustrating as hell. Wilde looked like he was about ready to start banging on the hatch with his bare paws when, as casually as you might pull out your phone, Mikaere pulls a demolition charge out of his pack. I don't know what Wilde was thinking right that second, but I know I just about crapped my pants.

 **He happened to have an explosive charge with him?**

It was one of the same ones that'd blown up top. He'd found it strapped to an electrical panel and stuffed it in his pack rather than leave it behind. Lucky for us, I guess. After he'd convinced us that he wasn't going to blow us all to hell, he shaved a little piece off the explosive block with his knife. He spent a second kneading it in his paws, molded it over the top of the padlock on the hatch, attached some kinda detonator thing he had in his vest, and suggested we find somewhere else to hang out.

I didn't need to be told twice. The three of us hauled ass out of there, and the charge went off about thirty seconds later. It wasn't as loud as I thought it'd be, but we still flinched; I think we were all the tiniest bit afraid it'd cause a cave in, even if Mik had repeatedly assured us that it wouldn't. We clambered back in to find the lock obliterated, along with a decent-sized portion of the hatch. It took a little work, but between the three of us we managed to push the rest open.

I'm not sure what Mik and Wilde expected to find on the other side, but I know I didn't expect to see a narrow tunnel that looked as if it'd been dug right up to the hatch. Wilde was just leaning forward to take a look when he froze and his nose started twitching like crazy; he'd picked up his partner's scent.

I didn't smell it, and neither did Mikaere. Or at least we didn't smell it specifically. Our noses were overwhelmed by the smells of blood and sweat and dust that clogged the air. All Wilde had to go on was the tiniest hint, but he swore it was still easy for him to pick it out from everything else. He told us that they'd been partners for more than a year and insisted that he knew her scent like it was his own. He must have, too; one sniff was all it took for him to know we were on the right track.

The passage got narrower and narrower as we went along, shouting the whole way, until we were practically crawling. I'll admit I was beginning to doubt Wilde's sniffer when I heard a voice. It was faint, barely even audible, but it was there. We all heard it, drifting out of a loose rock wall nearby. Whoever it was, they'd heard us moving toward them, and they were trying to get our attention. We got right to work clearing the rubble away, but it was slow-going. I could tell Wilde wanted to start tearing rocks away as fast as he could grab them, but the last thing we needed was another cave-in. Every time he'd start moving too fast I'd grab him by the arm. I didn't need to say anything; it was enough to remind him to take it easy.

It was exhausting work, especially when we were already running on fumes, but each time I tugged a rock out of the way I hoped that there'd be a mammal on the other side. We were getting closer, I knew. Their voices were getting clearer and louder with every inch. Wilde started shouting 'Carrots' and heard someone on the other side shouting his name back. **[He smiles]** I remember thinking that they sounded happy, but not surprised; like they'd already known Wilde was coming and were just excited that he'd finally made it. I stepped back to let him take the lead, and I was just grabbing my medical bag when we broke through. The very first thing I saw this bunny with intensely purple eyes and a huge smile, both aimed right at Wilde.

 **That was his partner, Judy Hopps?**

Yup. I gotta admit that when he told me he was going back in for his partner, I expected to see another fox. Another pred, at least. His reaction at the bottom of the elevator shaft suddenly made a lot more sense, though.

 **You didn't ask what species his partner was?**

Why would I? It wouldn't have changed anything.

When I looked in behind the, though, I was...I don't even know...stunned? Terrified? Somehow, that crazy-ass partner of Wilde's had gathered up over _two hundred_ other survivors. They'd broken through into the surrounding cave network, and the more of them I saw the sicker I felt.

 **Wouldn't you have been happy to find so many mammals alive?**

What are you...yeah! Gods yeah, of course I was glad to find them, but that many presented a serious issue. I'd gone down there thinking that we'd find, at most, a dozen survivors. That's what I'd planned our exit strategy around, too. But with so many mammals, there was no way in hell we could go back the way we came. Even if there hadn't been any wounded, there's no way they could all make the trip. We were guaranteed to lose some of them on the tyro line alone, and that's assuming the line held the whole time.

 **What was going through your head at that moment?**

I was alternating between thanking every single deity I could think of that we'd found survivors and trying to figure out how the hell we were going to get them all back to the surface. I looked back to ask the guys and...uh... **[He laughs]** Then my train of thought got slightly derailed by 'Why is Wilde making out with that bunny?'

Considering the circumstances, we were willing to give them a second, but eventually Mikaere had to give Wilde a whack upside the head to let him know he and his girlfriend were holding up the show. Whatever Hollywood might tell you, the power of love doesn't actually conquer everything; least of all structural instabilities. I filled them in on our little issue, and although I _was_ hoping they could think of another solution, I wasn't expecting Hopps to put forward the craziest suggestion I'd ever heard.

 **What was that?**

She figured that if we couldn't go back up the way we came, then the only way to make it to the surface was to lead two hundred scared and injured mammals through a massive, uncharted, and possibly unstable cave network – all under the assumption that it could lead us to the surface at all.

I would have told her to take her plan and shove it, except that even if it _was_ a crazy idea; it was also our _only_ idea. **[He sighs]** Just another fun-filled day with Tri-Burrow Search & Rescue.

~o~o~o~

 *** This is a slight exaggeration. The deepest parts of the Homestead cave network have been measured at approximately 1750 metres.**


	9. Pt 8 - Hell Bent

**The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective  
Part 8: Hell Bent  
** _by Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 **ooooo**

 **"** **Sometimes the only difference between an ordinary mammal and a hero is the worst moment of their lives."**

Judith Hopps – Rabbit  
Pathfinder

 **ooooo**

 **Having left the café, Judy Hopps and I begin to walk toward the edge of town and in the approximate direction of the Hopps Family Farm. Although she no longer lives in her childhood burrow, the cottage she calls home lies near the southern edge of her family's property, right on the banks of the Starling River.**

 **When I ask why she chooses to live above ground, rather than in a burrow of her own, her answer is simple; she likes to see the sun come up.**

It's tough to describe what it's like after a cave-in. In the movies, they always show mammals sitting in a single open area. Maybe it's a little cramped, but otherwise it's not too bad. It's a lot more chaotic in real life. The odds of ending up with a single space are impossibly slim. More likely you'll end up with what we had; a long vein that connected a series of small pockets. It stretched for longer than I could hear, a mix of oddly-shaped chambers and frighteningly narrow passages.

After I came to, the very first thing I did was start looking for...well...anything, honestly. As much as I was searching for any other survivors, I was looking for a stable side tunnel to take refuge in, or a flash of outside light, or even just a hint of moving air. I was still trying to get my bearings, and part of me needed something to grab hold of to steady myself, if only mentally.

I wouldn't have admitted it at the time – maybe I wasn't even fully aware of it – but I was completely terrified that I might be the only one still alive down there. I'd been looking for a while when I came across a terrified eighteen-year-old buck. I asked if he was alright and whether he was injured, but all he'd say was that he needed to find his supervisor. He repeated that over and over until he began to cry. I'm not exactly proud that I slapped him, but I needed to get through to him and it was the only thing I could think of.

Once he managed to get his head on straight, we did our introductions. His name was Chris Cottontail, and he'd been with the Burrowers for less than two months. He'd only finished his training a couple of weeks earlier, and Homestead was the first project he'd ever worked on. I figured that he'd be mostly dead weight, but he was a good kid and I wasn't about to just leave him there. Who'd have thought things would turn out like they did?

We got moving again, both of us shouting out, then listening carefully for any response. Every time we were met with silence, it felt a little more unsettling. We'd been at it for almost twenty minutes when we came across another pair of mammals. I'd felt a half-second of hope when the light off my headlamp bounced off the reflective strips on their harnesses, but all it took was one good look to realize they were unquestionably dead, crushed by falling rocks. It was a sight I wish I could forget; I almost threw up right there. I didn't say anything when I heard Chris start to cry again. He wasn't hysterical this time, and if there was ever a time for tears, that was it. We kept on like that for hours, crawling through that narrow tunnel.

We did find survivors; more than I expected to, honestly. We'd find them huddled in a side passage or under some piece of half-buried machinery, and I'd feel my heart swell every time at the joy and relief in their eyes. We passed a couple more bodies, too, and we had to get pretty close to a couple of them. **[She shudders]** Sometimes it was so tight that you'd have to lay flat, arms stretched out in front of you, and wriggle along an inch at a time.

 **Were you encouraged by that? That you found more survivors than bodies?**

Not really. In all likelihood, for every body we saw there were far more who'd been buried altogether. It was hard not to get hung up on that. It still is.

Before we knew it, we had a little more than four dozen mammals trailing behind us like ducklings. I was focused on the path ahead, so every time we picked up someone new I'd tell them that Chris would check their injuries and get them caught up. After the third mammal he took care of, he'd started to look a little more composed. After the first dozen, he had Burrowers hopping around like a career Foreman. **[She laughs softly]** Honestly, he was the scrawniest rabbit I'd ever seen, and he had forty-year-old diggers twice his size calling him 'sir'.

Thinking back, I can't remember who decided he and I were in charge, especially since one of the others actually _was_ a foreman. Maybe they were just following the closest thing to structure and order we had down there. Maybe they just saw the Pathfinder patch and assumed I knew where I was going. I remember the way they all looked at me, though, with this frightened-but-hopeful expression that asked 'You know what to do now, right?'

 **Did you?**

At that point, I barely knew which way was up. I felt like a little kitten again, scared and alone at the bottom of that well, except this time Jimmy Burton wouldn't be coming to carry me to safety. So, I fell back on what I knew; I moved quietly, closed my eyes, and _listened_.

 **What were you listening for?**

Everything. The grinding of the rocks, the echo of our footsteps, the movement of the air. I pretended I was back home, stumbling around the burrow blindfolded and trying to sneak up on my siblings. They used to think I was crazy, but all that training paid off. It wasn't long before I heard a faint scrabbling sound, and if I really focused I could barely hear the sound of voices. For a second I thought it was a rescue team, until I realized that the sounds were coming from deeper into the tunnel.

We started digging toward the sounds, carefully shifting rocks aside one by one and waiting to see if anything else moved as a result. As much as we wanted to rush through it, we knew it was too dangerous; everything was just so unstable. They heard us, as well, because they started digging in our direction from the other side. When we finally broke through, the first thing I laid eyes on was a grinning kangaroo rat. He came flying through the hole, actually tried to _kiss_ me, and I swatted him right out of the air. I almost felt bad, then he looked up at me with that same stupid grin and says... **[She laughs, shaking her head]** I swear, he says 'Sorry, love. I thought you were an angel.' Unbelievable.

His name was Brodie Hester, and I was surprised to learn he was actually a medic.

 **You were surprised to see a rodent working as a medic?**

No, I was surprised that we were lucky enough to find a medic at all.

Rodent medics are actually pretty common. Most medical teams are one small mammal and one large mammal; the smaller one has the nimbler paws and can get into tight spaces, while the bigger one can carry more equipment and move larger patients. Brodie's partner had been a badger named Thurlow.

 **Was Thurlow there as well?**

 **[She shakes her head.]** He'd been on the surface when the bombs went off. A digger had broken his toe, and Thurlow had gone up top to take him to the infirmary and fill out the paperwork. Talk about lucky, right?

Anyway, Brodie had been rounding up survivors, too. He'd been coming up from the end of the other forward tunnel, opposite and a little lower than the one where Nick and I would have been doing our recon. The structural damage hadn't been too bad down there, but a falling rock had broken one of the fire suppression pipes and the tunnel had started to flood. The water hadn't been particularly deep, but it was cold enough that staying there would have been a death sentence.

We kept on like that for a while; listen closely, dig until we found someone, and hope we were headed in the right direction.

 **You didn't know where you were going?**

Not exactly, no. It's not as though there were any landmarks. There were also some fairly large iron deposits in the Redwall mountains, and we were close enough to them to make a compass useless. **[She smiles]** I'm pretty good at reading the rocks, though. If we found a solid rock wall, it was a safe bet that it was one of the original tunnel walls. From there, I could use the tool-marks to figure out which way the drills had been going when the tunnel was carved; we wanted to go in the opposite direction. It wasn't a perfect system, but it was all we had. Whenever we linked up with another group of survivors, we'd learn a little more about the remaining tunnels.

 **How far did you make it?**

As far as the bottom of the cargo lift shaft. The lift car was there, fallen on its side. We tried to get the roof hatch open, but the handle wouldn't budge. We didn't have the tools to pry it, or even enough room to try if we did. We considered trying to dig around it, but the car was nearly as wide as the shaft it travelled in. There was no guarantee that we'd be able to find a way past it.

The lift shaft was the only way back to the surface, so with that blocked we decided to make our way to the forward tunnel face. There was a supply shed in that direction, and it had most of what we'd need to wait it out until help arrived. It wasn't easy; the narrow passage meant that I couldn't just run up to the front of the group. We all just turned around and started moving back the way we came. We did have a few dozen rodents, though, and they were able to move back and forth along the line to make sure everyone was kept in the loop.

I heard the sounds of joy and relief long before I actually saw the massive empty chamber ***** the diggers had broken into. I'd have mistaken it for a surviving section of the causeway, but the walls were too irregular and the ground too uneven. It was just as safe, though, and that was enough for me.

 **Why was it safe?**

Natural cave systems are usually fairly stable, especially that deep. They'd already had to stand up to the test of time, so even if we were still trapped, at least we wouldn't have to worry as much about the roof caving in. More importantly, though, the air was moving. That meant that somewhere there was an opening to the outside, if only a small crack, and that knocked suffocation down the list of things we had to worry about.

You know what they say; even small victories are still victories.

We got everyone situated as well as we could, attempted to keep the wounded comfortable, and tried to figure out what to do next. We'd figured out that there had been roughly four hundred Burrowers on the bottom levels when everything came down. A quick head count revealed that we'd rounded up about half of that, and we'd found somewhere around thirty dead; that left just under a hundred and twenty unaccounted for.

I wanted to go looking for more, but the others convinced me that it just wasn't worth the risk. **[She frowns]** It was a tough thing to accept, but a lot of the mammals we had with us were already hurt. Those that weren't, myself included, were running on adrenaline and little else; better to sit tight and wait for a rescue team that risk lives over mammals who were probably already dead.

 **[We carry on quietly for a few minutes. We've left Bunnyburrow proper, following the road west]**

 **How did you pass the time?**

 **[She shrugs]** However we could, honestly. Some mammals played twenty-questions. Others tried to get some sleep. Chris crawled from group to group, checking in on them and reporting back to me. I'd never asked him to, but I wasn't about to stop him either. It made him feel like he was staying on top of things, I guess.

Brodie did his best to take care of the wounded. There was a marmot who'd broken a couple of ribs. Brodie brought him a pile of small pebbles and told him to use his good arm to place them one-by-one on his chest. The second he felt any pain, he was supposed to remove them, count how many pebbles he'd used, and write down the number. Then he was supposed to wait ten minutes and do it again.

 **Why was that?**

I think Brodie told him that it'd help track the effects of his injury? Something along those lines, at least. I'm sure if the marmot had really stopped to think about it, he'd have realized that didn't make a lot of sense. Heck, maybe he did realize and just did it anyway. Every mammal needs something to hope for, but if hope is in short supply then at least you can give them something to _do_.

There were others that weren't in such good shape. Some were so badly hurt that Brodie pulled me off to the side to discuss options; if we'd been down there much longer, we would've needed to start looking for a place to put the bodies.

 **Their injuries were that severe?**

 **[She nods gravely]** The conditions down there didn't help much, either. The ground was extremely uneven, so there weren't many places to lay down. Plus, just waiting around made it a lot tougher to ignore the cold. No matter how well dressed you were for it, there wasn't a thing you could do to keep it from seeping into your bones. Pathfinders really aren't the 'sit and wait' type, and our clothing reflected that. Most of it was designed to keep us relatively comfortable without impeding our movement or overheating us; the heaviest thing I had on was a softshell jacket. I managed to get a little sleep here and there, but for the most part I had to keep moving around. If I sat down for more than twenty minutes I'd just start shivering.

Whatever thermal blankets we had were being used on the wounded, and it wasn't as though we could light a fire.

 **Aren't many caves warmer at depth, closer to the earth's core?**

Relatively speaking, but Homestead was the furthest we'd ever gone into the Redwall Mountains; we really weren't any closer to the earth's core. The main entrance was at the center of a massive alpine meadow, a little more than fifteen hundred metres ASL. We were trapped about fourteen hundred metres below that.

 **Wait...you were trapped nearly a mile down, but you were still above sea level?**

That's nothing. Capybara Cave, over in Eastern Ewerope, bottoms out at twenty-two hundred metres and _still_ sits sixty metres ASL. At the end of the day, your relative altitude isn't as concerning as the thousands of tons of rock between you and daylight.

Anyway, the temperature where we were stuck was a balmy nine degrees, and the water temperature was just a hair above freezing. That's bad enough on the surface, but sitting still without an external heat source? It's only a matter of time before your body can't produce enough heat to keep up, and we were down there for over twenty hours before we heard a muffled thump reverberate through the rocks.

At the time I thought it sounded kinda familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. I strained my ears for any kind of follow-up sounds, and when I heard the sound of someone shouting 'search and rescue' I was almost too scared to believe it. I grabbed a few diggers and we started clearing the tunnel entrance. Every piece of stone that we moved aside made it a little easier to hear the mammals working on the other side, and when I heard Nick's voice shouting my name my heart almost burst from my chest.

When those rocks fell away a few minutes later and I saw his face, I...well... **[She smiles embarrassedly]** Let's just say that I was very happy to see him.

I didn't quite know what to make of Nick's 'team', though. When I'd heard his voice, I'd pictured him at the head of a whole column of search and rescue mammals. I mean, I love Mike and Mikaere, but at the time they were a little disappointing. So was the news that we couldn't go back out using the same route they'd taken in. That only left one possible route and it was – according to Mike - 'absolute fucking insanity'. Mikaere didn't say anything about it one way or another, but he didn't look very enthusiastic either.

 **What was the route?**

The way the three of them had used to get to us wasn't an option anymore, so the only way out was through. We had to hope that the caverns led us to safety. Hope being the operative word since we had no idea what to expect.

I'd been working on the plan just to keep my mind occupied, but until the guys arrived we hadn't had the resources to even consider it, let alone actually _try_. Now that they'd arrived with extra climbing gear and enough rations for everyone, we had the strength to go for it.

Mikaere led a small team back to the cargo car so they could strip it for parts – anything we could use to make a splint or a spine-board. Mike's medical kit already had about a dozen micro-sized spine-boards, so he and Brodie got to work securing all the severely injured micros - smaller rodents like Brodie himself. When he got back, Mikaere emptied out all the pouches on his vest and padded them with gauze so he could carry the smallest wounded. Once all the wounded were secure and everyone was accounted for, we loaded up and started moving.

It wasn't easy; it was absolutely horrible, actually. We moved at a snail's pace through one cavern after another. There were a lot of choke points or impassible obstacles. There were more than a few times that a route didn't pan out and we'd have to back-track. We also had to pass up more than a few routes that _looked_ promising, simply because we wouldn't be able to take the wounded with us.

 **Could you have left them behind with a few caretakers, then sent help back for them?**

They probably wouldn't have made it if we did. We had to keep moving and do the best we could on the way. Brodie scurried back and forth between the wounded so many times, I'm pretty sure his trip back to the surface was twice as far as the rest of us.

We tried to keep the vertical climbs to a minimum, for everyone's sake. Mike had our only pair of ascenders, and we needed to use them every time a spine-boarded injury had to go up a wall or chimney or anything vertical. The steep inclines were even worse. We'd need to have at least two mammals for every stretcher, doing their best to hold the board steady as they trudged their way up the slope.

There was only a dozen of us there who had significant climbing experience. Even worse, Nick and Mike were the only ones with rescue and recovery training. They could walk the rest of us through the basics, but they were still being pulled in ten directions at once and they couldn't help everybody. I wanted to be more help, but that just wasn't my specialty, and no one needed any geological samples taken.

Nick was a lot better suited to keeping everyone moving steadily, so I took to scouting the route ahead and mapping the caverns as we went ******. Ever since Harvey's Hope, I've been kind of a stickler about route mapping. The measurements weren't perfect, of course, but at least we didn't get turned around. Mikaere set me up with a piece of aluminum tubing about four feet long so I could check the corners. I'd carry it lengthwise along the tunnels; if the tube didn't fit around a bend, neither would the stretchers. That meant a lot of back-tracking.

We were about four hours into our ascent when Brodie put his foot down and said we needed to stop for a rest. We didn't want to, but he can be pretty forceful for someone six inches tall. It took a few minutes to get everyone gathered up, then I sat down next to Nick. It was the first time since we'd been reunited that we'd had a moment to stop and take a breath, and it was a lot more awkward than I'd been expecting; we hadn't shared an awkward silence since training. I had about a thousand things I wanted to say to him right then, but I couldn't seem to find my voice. I was still trying as I leaned against his shoulder, and I fell asleep long before I managed so much as a word.

I don't know how long I'd been out for – half an hour, maybe? – when Nick shook me awake. One of the wounded diggers had died, and we had to figure out whether or not to leave the body behind. We didn't want to force someone to carry a body when they could be helping someone who was still alive. On the other paw, leaving someone behind – even if they were dead – could have been a crippling emotional blow at a time when those mammals needed all the hope we could give them.

It was one of those cold, logical decisions no one ever wants to make, and it was actually Chris who made the decision for us. He volunteered to carry the body to the surface. He was absolutely adamant that nobody be left behind. He wrapped the body in a thermal blanket and pushed, pulled or carried it the rest of the way. As young and scrawny as he was, he showed more strength of character than any mammal I've ever met.

The second half of our ascent was even more punishing than the first. The higher we got, the more moisture there was on the rocks. It was easy to slip if you didn't watch out. By the time we reached the end of the tunnel, we were a complete mess of bruises, cuts and scrapes.

 **You mean when you reached the surface?**

No, I mean when we reached the end of the tunnel. We followed the passages as high as they would go, but there wasn't anything there. No opening to the surface, no new cavern...nothing. Just a dead end, a blank stone surface mocking us for coming so far. Nick wasn't ready to give up, though. He was pressed against the wall, sniffing loudly. He swore he could smell fresh air, and I believed him.

 **Did you find another route?**

Nope, there was no 'other route' for that one; the only way out, was through.

Mikaere still had a fair-sized demolition charge in his bag, but he'd left his demolitions kit behind. He was really beating himself up over that when Nick remembered his control anklet. He'd managed to remove it before coming in after me and had thrown it in his pack out of habit. The remote trigger for it that was still in its pouch on my harness, were I always left it. It wasn't much, but it could still generate enough of a shock to set of the explosive.

It took Mikaere nearly an hour to rig the charges. A part of me wanted to tell him to go faster, but he was the explosives expert. If he was _taking_ an hour, it was because he _needed_ an hour. We backed off as far as the remote's signal would let us, which was a lot less than Mikaere would have preferred. I remember thinking how ironic it was that a bomb was what had trapped us down there, and now another bomb might be what was going to set us free. He glanced back at us, took a deep breath, and hit the trigger.

The collapse had sounded like a falling mountain, and the charge the guys had used on the cargo car hatch had sounded like a muffled gunshot. The blast in that tunnel, though... It was like sharing an elevator with a thunderstorm. It was so loud that I felt my bones shake.

It worked, though; we had our way through, even if it came at a cost.

 **What cost was that?**

A lot of caverns are like eggs. They're pretty strong until you crack the shell, then the whole thing is weakened as a result. There was just no way to tell how badly we'd just compromised the tunnel's integrity, so we had to start getting mammals into the next cavern as quickly as we could.

We'd gotten pretty quick at it by that point, and nearly everyone was through when something shifted. One of the diggers, an older groundhog was squeezing his way through the opening when a chunk of rock fell from above. Another few inches to the left and it would have taken his head off; instead it just hit the side of his neck, clipped the artery and I felt a splash of something warm on my face. Before I had time to realize it was blood, Nick was shouting at me to pinch down on either side of the damage to try and stop the bleeding. He told me not to let go for anything, even as we were struggling to get the wounded mammal out of the hole.

There were three Burrowers left to come through, but the shifting rocks had them spooked. I wanted to go in to get them, but I had my paws clamped down on the side of that digger's neck. If I'd let go, even for the couple of seconds it might take for someone else to take over, we might have lost him. Chris, he...uh...he said he'd take care of it, and I said fine. I was stressed, exhausted, terrified that the groundhog laying in front of me was going to die, so I just said fine.

He scrambled back in and literally shoved two of the remaining mammals through. The last one was injured; Chris had to carry him to the opening and hand him to the mammals waiting. Then he went back to make sure no one else was left. He... **[She pauses]** He didn't want anyone to get left behind. He'd only been out of sight for a few seconds when the tunnel caved in.

I don't really remember what happened after that; not very clearly, anyway. I can half recall the shouts around me, the mad scramble to try and dig back in, the despair when they realized that there was no one left to save. I let my world narrow down to a single point; the injured mammal in front of my face. My paws were starting to cramp up when Brodie rushed over from wherever he'd been before. Pulling a small suture kit out of his pack, he reached in between my paws and began methodically stitching the artery closed. He finished just before my grip gave out, and we both held our breath as we waited to see if the stitches would hold; they did, and Brodie walked another mammal through bandaging the wound.

I finally looked back at where the opening had been and tried to grasp the fact that Chris was just...gone. I wish...I don't know...I wish I'd said something better than 'Fine.' I wish I'd told Chris how proud I was of him. That he'd saved lives. That he was a hero. I like to think he already knew, but... I dunno. **[She shrugs]** I just wish I'd said something better, and I can take some comfort in the fact that his sacrifice wasn't forgotten. *******

 **Where had the opening taken you?**

We didn't know, at first. It just looked like another cavern until someone pointed out that the ground was flat. The loose rock and debris had hidden it at first, but when I took a second to really look I realized that they were right. More importantly, there was a distinct but steady uphill grade.

As soon as the wounded were ready to move, the group began heading uphill in the blind hope that it was leading us toward the surface. No one said it - no one had to - but we were running on empty. Nick's tail was dragging in the dirt like a broom, and Brodie was all but passed out on his shoulder. Mike's eyes kept drooping; there were a couple of times that he nearly walked into a wall. Beside me I could hear Mikaere softly muttering 'one more step' over and over.

I was just concentrating on putting one paw in front of the other when I started thinking that something felt different. Gradually, the red hue of our headlamps had been giving way to a pale, yellow light, and then we turned a corner and were bathed in the light of overhead floodlamps. There were Burrowers everywhere, staring at us in awed silence as though we were ghosts who'd floated up from the darkness. They were stumbling over each other to get out of our way.

That was when I realized where we'd come through. The hole we'd blasted in the cavern wall had taken us through to the remains of the secondary causeway, and we'd followed that right up to The Iron Gate. It wasn't until much later that we learned that there had been bombs on either side of it. By all rights, the gate should have been wiped out altogether the moment the explosives went off; but it held up.

The only way we could've possibly made it out of Homestead alive, and it held up.

 **[We turn off the main route, continuing down a worn dirt road]**

I stumbled out of the tunnel to find myself beneath the biggest, brightest full moon I'd ever seen. It was so beautiful that I must have spaced out for a few minutes, at least. I don't know how long Nick had been shaking my shoulder before I snapped back to reality.

Mikaere had gently placed the smaller injured Burrowers he'd been carrying on the ground, so Brodie could check on them. Then he'd flopped down beside them, shouted that he was tired and that it was time for someone to carry _him_ for a change. Mike was leaning against a dozer tire, clutching a phone he'd borrowed to his ear and furiously apologizing to someone on the other end. I found out later that it was his wife, who'd been worried sick ever since he'd disobeyed orders. I heard someone get on the radio and call for help; the SAR trucks and ambulances appeared down the road not long after.

 **How did it feel, realizing that you'd made it out?**

It all caught up with me at once. One minute, I felt okay; tired, but still okay. The next... I didn't even know I was crying until I felt tears falling on my paws. I'd held it all in as long as I could, but I was suddenly overwhelmed by how close I'd come to dying down there. All it would have taken was one stroke of bad luck and I'd never have seen my family again. I'd never have felt the sun again or heard birds sing.

The last time we'd been that close to the edge had been Harvey's Hope, but that had been one-hundred-percent our fault and easily could have been avoided. Homestead came out of nowhere, though. It took that fine thread that links each of us to this world, held it in front of my face, and made me understand just how easily and unexpectedly it could be severed.

I wish I could tell you I pulled myself together again, but I spent the entire ride to Bunnyburrow General sobbing into Nick's shoulder.

 **How did you control that fear when you were still underground?**

Discipline, at first. Then distraction after that. I'd been afraid that the tunnels wouldn't hold up, so I focused on finding the safest places I could. I'd been afraid to move the injured mammals, so I focused on following Brodie's instructions to the letter. I kept the fear from taking over by keeping my mind working. I didn't need that on the climb up, though.

 **Why is that?**

Because Nick was there. **[The cottage appears around a bend in the road, and she smiles fondly at the fox waiting for us on the front porch]** When we're together, I'm not afraid of anything.

~o~o~o~

 *** - The cavern network that the Homestead survivors followed to safety was later named Sanctuary Hollow.**

 **** - Judy Hopps' improvised map of Sanctuary Hollow is regarded as the textbook example of on-the-fly surveying.**

 ***** - After Homestead, Christopher Mason Cottontail was posthumously inducted into Tri-Burrow Search & Rescue, and his name was officially added to the list of Rescuers who lost their lives in the line of duty.**

 **ooooo**

 **[** ** _A/N:_** _To see the real-world place that inspired Homestead, look up Krubera Cave in the country of Georgia._ **]**


	10. Pt 9 - Boom Town

_**A/N:** Guess who's ahead of schedule?_

~o~o~o~

 **The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective  
Part 9: Boom Town  
** _by Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 _[Although these interviews have not been published in their entirety and are edited for size, the statements within are presented entirely in context. -ed.]_

~o~o~o~

 **ooooo**

 **"** **A mammal's gotta do what a mammal's gotta do."**

Gideon Grey – Fox  
Owner, _Gideon Grey's Real Good Baked Stuff_

 **ooooo**

 **Sitting in Gideon Grey's bakery and watching the fox hard at work, it's impressive to see the husky mammal moving so smoothly from task to task. Although he has been able to hire a staff of nearly twenty in the past year, it is clear that the fox is seldom idle.**

Y'all don't mind if I keep workin' while we talk?

 **That's fine.**

I appreciate that. I've been busier than a one-armed juggler ever since those fancy Zootopia restaurants started placin' orders. Would you believe that mammals in the city are willin' to pay more money for smaller portions? Seems crazy to me, but I guess it's their money and it spends as well as anyone else's.

 **You grew up in Bunnyburrow?**

Sure did, even if it wasn't the easiest time.

 **Why was that?**

My Pa died when I was still little, my Ma had to work three jobs to make ends meet, an' there weren't a lot of other preds around for me to spend time with. That's tough for a kit, y'know? I had a lot of self-image issues an' a lot of self-doubt. Sure didn't help that foxes weren't too popular around these parts back then. Left me feelin' like there was somethin' wrong with me bein' me, and I acted out. A lot. Basically, I was a major jerk.

 **You seem to have overcome those challenges.**

I appreciate you sayin' so, but I won't lie; I didn't do it on my own. After I dropped out of high school I started gettin' into even more trouble. Then I went an' picked a fight with the wrong goat, damn near got the stuffin' kicked outta me, and ended the night in pawcuffs. I sure was lucky that I was still a minor, 'cause instead of sendin' me away to prison the judge put me in court-ordered counselin'. Absolutely changed my life.

 **What compelled you to drive out to Homestead that night?**

I just heard what was happenin' and figured that if those mammals were gonna be down there workin' to save lives, then the very least I could do was help them work with full stomachs. Lemme tell ya, some mammals weren't too encouragin'. My truck got more than a few laughs, that's for sure. But my councilor told me that no matter who you are and where you go, there's always gonna be mammals lookin' to take a poke at ya. There's no sense gettin' all riled up every time they do.

Besides, my financial advisor told me the bakery was probably gonna go bankrupt in another month or two. I was just startin' out back then, and if I'm bein' honest I had a lot more time and ingredients than I had customers. I figured that I might as well go out with a bang.

 **What was your reaction to learning you'd won the Civic Integrity award?**

Damn surprised, I'll tell ya that; I'd never even heard of a nominee who wasn't a bunny. 'Sides, I didn't think I'd done anythin' that special. I like to think anyone else woulda done the same in my place.

~o~o~o~

 **ooooo**

 **"** **My daughter's choices may fly right in the face of everything I was raised to believe, but that doesn't make me any less proud of her."**

Bonnie Hopps – Rabbit  
CEO, _Hopps Family Farms LLC_

 **ooooo**

 **Stepping into the Hopps Family Farm offices, located just down the hall from the kitchen in the family's home burrow, is like stepping into another world. While the rest of the house shares a warm, country-farm atmosphere, these rooms more closely resemble the type of corporate office one might find in downtown Zootopia.**

 **To my left, a series of flat-screen televisions display the current state of several dozen global agricultural markets. To my right, an entire wall is dominated by planting and harvesting schedules. Directly ahead, Bonnie Hopps is sitting with Stuart Hopps – her husband and COO (Chief of Operations) – going over the coming season's crop yield projections.**

 **She excuses herself to join me in a nearby sitting room. As she pours me a cup of tea and places it on the floral-patterned coffee table, it's easy to forget that the matronly bunny is the head of a multimillion-dollar business.**

Tell me, Mr. Grayson, do you have children?

 **No, I don't.**

Hm. Well, I've got thirty of my own, and a little over two-hundred-and-fifty nieces and nephews who might as well be my kids. A Hopps generation of nearly _three-hundred,_ and just one of them has given me more grey hairs than all the rest of them combined. I love my Judy to death, but I knew she was going to be a challenge right from day one. She came from a litter of four, and she was still born a full forty-eight hours before the other three. Nothing has ever been able to hold that girl back. She was so smart and so determined to follow her dreams; that's what had me scared for her.

Rabbits prosper because we support one another. As a whole, we're greater than the sum of our parts. So, when Judy told us that she wanted to go to become a police officer, all I could picture was my baby, _alone_ , in a far-away city where her family couldn't support her. So yes, I fought her every step of the way, telling myself it was for her own good. I was certain that she'd thank me someday.

You see, I was raised to believe in traditional rabbit values. The way I was brought up, a buck had a responsibility to go out and provide for his family, and a doe had responsibilities closer to home. They raised the children, kept the burrow in order, assembled schedules, tracked finances, and managed the family's business and corporate holdings.

When Judy didn't appear the slightest bit interested in any of that, I thought she might want to stay if she had someone to stay for. I tried introducing her to the sons of a few friends of mine. When that didn't work, I tried fixing her up with a couple of their daughters. **[She notices my expression and laughs softly]** I was just trying to be supportive. Most of her wardrobe was sports bras and track pants, she could whoop the tails of most of her brothers, and whenever her sisters started gossiping about boys she'd just get up and leave the room. Of _course_ I thought she was gay, but so are two of her siblings and a few dozen of her cousins. It's hardly unprecedented.

I agreed to pay for her to get a Criminal Justice degree, but that was only because I thought if she spent some time away from home, she'd get so lonely that she wouldn't want to leave again.

 **How did you feel when you learned that the Mammal Inclusion Initiative hadn't passed?**

When we learned about that, we were so happy that our daughter would be safe that we were blind to how much she was _hurting_. When Judy finally pushed back...well, let's just say I could have handled that conversation a little more gracefully. Stu played go-between for a couple of weeks, waiting until I'd cooled off enough to listen to reason, then we sat down and had a long talk about how we'd been trying to raise our rebellious daughter.

I was finally forced to accept that Judy was never, ever going to be like me. The life I had - the life I'd wanted for her - ran entirely against her nature. She might have been _capable_ of it, but it would make her miserable. Day by day, it would smother that fire she had inside of her. It shook me to my core when I realized that in my attempts to 'help' her, I'd come perilously close to breaking my little girl's spirit.

I remember that moment so vividly. I couldn't breathe. My paws began to shake, but when Stu took hold of them and told me it was going to be alright, I pulled away and started sobbing. I was so ashamed of myself that I couldn't even look my husband in the eye.

 **Your relationship seems better now.**

Yes, I like to think I've made up for my mistakes. That doesn't mean I don't still get scared for her sometimes, but she's a grown bunny and her choices are her own to make – whether I agree with them or not. I made a promise to myself that however unusual or unnerving her life's path might seem to me, I would to respect it and maybe – in time – try to understand it.

Of course, that was when she introduced us to her new boyfriend. **[She rolls her eyes]** In hindsight, I probably should have seen _that_ one coming.

~o~o~o~

 **ooooo**

 **"** **I've taken a lot of flak in the last couple of years over the Homestead evacuation, but I've never doubted for a second that it was the right choice."**

Patricia Delacour – Rabbit  
Site Manager – Homestead Construction Project

 **ooooo**

 **Patricia Delacour was already an experienced construction project manager when she joined the Burrowers at the age of thirty-two. Nearly sixty-five now, she has personally overseen more than twenty separate burrow projects in the span of her career.**

 **We meet at her office in the Burrower headquarters building. There are several half-filled boxes scattered around the room, and although she claims to be packing up in preparation for her retirement, I notice that the construction projections for the New Haven burrow are sitting on her desk.**

As much as we'd trained and prepared for collapse situations, nothing about that had prepared us for Homestead. The Burrowers are a civil engineering organization, and our emergency procedures had never been tested against deliberate sabotage. Neither had any of our designs, meaning we had no idea how the structure would react. I refused to needlessly endanger lives in what could very well have been a powder keg.

 **Don't deep-cave rescue operations have a very short timeline?**

Yes. What's your point?

 **Did you weigh the risk of losing any survivors against the potential risk of further explosions?**

Of _course_ I did. However, rescues generally run at a three-to-one ratio; you need at least three mammals to get to and extract one. When Ngata's runner arrived to report the explosives, there were a little under five-hundred Burrowers still missing. I simply wasn't willing to risk some additional fifteen-hundred lives in an already unstable underground structure that we'd just discovered was rigged to blow.

And please spare me the 'but three mammals at Homestead...' comments. I've heard them all. What Gatherpole, Wilde, and Ngata pulled off was an extraordinary and unprecedented exception to the rule.

 **How did the mammals around you respond to the order?**

Vic Odynski certainly had a few things to say on the matter. He got right in my face about it, too. If it had been _anyone_ else I'd have whooped their ass from one side of the site to the other, but Vic's a good mammal. One of the best I've ever known, in fact, and I wouldn't have expected any less from him. Besides, his temper's like a thunderstorm; nothing to do except wait for it to blow itself out.

It was right about then that some bureaucratic nitwit came swaggering in to the control office and loudly declared that he was in charge now. He was some kind of 'Emergency Management Expert' that the mammals at headquarters had sent to take over. Why he was showing up sixteen hours into the rescue operation, I'll never know, but he had all the right paperwork. I even called the higher-ups to make sure.

He'd been in charge for about thirty seconds when he decided to halt all rescue operations, so the structural inspection teams could individually check and clear all the support beams. He was convinced that was the safest and most efficient course of action.

Now, I don't know how familiar you are with the kind of complex emergency techniques we employ in these kinds of scenarios, but that sure as hell wasn't one of them. In fact, if I had to provide a technical definition for his plan, it would be _fucking asinine_. There wasn't a damn thing those structural inspectors could do that couldn't be accomplished faster and more effectively by dedicated Reconnaissance and Demolitions teams.

 **Did you tell him as much?**

I sure as hell would have, except that was the moment when everything started to go right off the rails. Our new 'expert' was just in the middle of some kind of weekend-management-retreat motivational speech nonsense when one of the radio operators started shouting about a SAR Tech who wasn't obeying the evac order.

 **That was Michael Gatherpole?**

 **[She nods]** And if there's one thing you can say about Vic, it's that he cares about the mammals who work for him like they were his own kids. He practically shoved the poor radio operator out of the way so he could talk to Gatherpole himself. At the same time, this pissed-off looking corrections officer comes stomping into the control office, ranting about a mongoose who just helped a convicted felon escape.

 **Mikaere Ngata?**

You're two for two. Since prison breaks weren't exactly Ngata's style, and we didn't have another mongoose in the Burrowers, I was having difficulty taking this bobcat's word for it. That's why I politely told him to shut his mouth and sit down until I was ready to deal with his shit. I was vaguely aware of Vic advising Gatherpole to do something stupid as I got on my site radio to call Lucy McCloud, the only other Demolitions Technician on site. I asked her what Ngata's status was, and she confirmed that he'd followed Wilde back into Homestead to, and I quote, 'be some kind of big dumbass hero'.

I remember thinking that things couldn't get any more absurd when someone spins me around, there's no sign of that damn bobcat, and there's Vic doing that... **[she gestures vaguely into the air]** ... _thing_ that he does.

 **What do you mean?**

He's got this _look_ that gives you; it makes you feel like he's offering you the chance to become a superhero or something. It's like he's silently asking you to do something stupid and dangerous and selfless, and you _want_ to do it because it's the right thing to do. I _hate_ that look, partly because it's always the lead-up to him saying something stupid and cliché that somehow _still_ manages to make your heart swell up. I knew it was coming, but when he gave me that damn smile and told me what he needed me to do, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that I was going to help him.

 **What did he say?**

He said 'Patty, I'm gonna need you to call in a few more mammals, because we ain't done here yet.' **[She rolls her eyes lightly]** You'd think he was John Wayne or something.

 **And did you? Call in more personnel?**

Are you kidding? I called in every single specialist in the damn Corps. If I was going to send mammals back in there, I wanted it to be the toughest, smartest, and most qualified mammals we had. And naturally Vic insisted on leading them in himself, because he's Vic and that's the kind of infuriatingly noble shit he does.

 **It sounds as though the two of you have a complex relationship.**

Oh, it's not complex at all. I respect him because he's intelligent, dedicated, and unquestionably capable; I _married_ him because he's honorable, selfless, incredibly brave, and almost unfairly good-looking.

 **Oh, I didn't realize...**

He's also reckless, stubborn, impulsive, generally exasperating, and practically allergic to common sense, which are just a few of the many reasons I divorced him. **[She frowns, leaning back and crossing her arms]** Stupid courageous _jackass_.

~o~o~o~

 **ooooo**

 **"** **When the world starts pushing you, I reckon it's about time to start pushing back."**

Victor Odynski – Rabbit  
Field Commander, Tri-Burrow Search & Rescue

 **ooooo**

 **At first glance, Victor "Sawtooth" Odynski doesn't seem to live up to his fearsome reputation, nor resemble the larger-than-life character I'd anticipated meeting. Rather, the mammal sitting at the table I approach seems to be the very picture of a country bunny. As I get closer, though, he looks up to reveal a wry smile and the most piercing gaze I have ever been subject to.**

 **Standing to firmly shake my paw, his movements seem better suited to a rabbit half his age. He speaks with a friendly and unhurried drawl, apparently in no rush as his deep baritone seems to command the attention of those around him.**

It's a fine thing you're doing, son. Collecting up these stories.

 **Oh...thank you.**

No, thank _you_. The way I figure it, the only thing worse than a tragedy is a tragedy that's been forgotten.

 **Would it be accurate to say you strongly opposed the suspension of rescue operations at Homestead?**

No. It'd be accurate to say I was downright _pissed off_ by the suspension of rescue operations at Homestead. I certainly gave Patty an earful over it, for all the good that did me.

 **You're referring to Patricia Delacour?**

That I am. Truth be told, as much as I hated standing down, I couldn't actually dispute her reasoning behind pulling everyone out. At that moment, regrouping to come up with a new plan was the smart move. What really had me chewing nails was that so called 'Emergency Management Expert' coming in and trying to take over. We're damn lucky that the operations crew knew well enough to understand that it was still Patty's show. **[He chuckles]** Not that everyone was so clever. One of those corrections officers...Rook, I think?

 **Rourke?**

That's the one. He started going off at her about how one of ours helped Wilde escape. She tried to point out that the aforementioned prisoner hadn't escaped so much as gone back _into_ Homestead, but that cat wouldn't hear it. I reckon he wasn't too keen on having to answer for a prisoner lost on his watch, so he started cussing and spitting in her face like he had a hope in hell of intimidating her. Too bad for him, Patricia is as willful a bunny as you could ever hope to meet. She had no time for whatever he was tryin' to sell. Hell, Rourke might as well have tried to shout the tide back out to sea. I have never, and I mean _never_ , seen a mammal get shut down as fast or as hard as she shut down that idiot. **[He smiles fondly]** I'd marry her again in a heartbeat if she'd have me.

In any case, I imagine that hurt his pride some getting torn down in front of everybody, but it wouldn't have happened if he'd kept a civil tongue. Knowing Patty as I do, I advised him that discretion is the better part of valor and suggested that he know when to pick his battles. Well, he must've wanted to show everyone in the room what a tough mammal he was, because no sooner had the words left my mouth than he just up and took a swing at me.

 **He hit you? Unprovoked?**

Oh, he sure swung at me unprovoked, but I never said he hit me. I may not be as young a buck as I used to be, but I can still dodge a punch from some idiot. I just eased myself out of the way, firmly reminded him why that kind of behavior is unacceptable, then got a couple of his boys to carry him out to one of the medical tents.

 **I'm sorry...carry him?**

 **[He chuckles]** Son, they call it a rabbit punch for a reason.

 **Where did things go from there?**

Lemme start by saying this: the mammals who take exception to the way Patty ran things don't know how lucky we were to have her. If you gave the Burrowers a hundred years, they still wouldn't be able to find someone better suited to being in charge that day. I asked her to call in some extra mammals to support operations, and I'll be damned if she didn't get a little over ninety-five percent of the corps' specialists on site inside of an hour. I don't know how many favors she had to cash in to make it happen, but the fact that she even had that kind of pull tells you a thing or two about her reputation.

 **Why take the risk of re-entering Homestead?**

Well, as a wiser fella than myself once said; if you can't do something smart, do something right.

We reasoned that if those boys were successful, they'd be coming back the way they came. We didn't know a thing about Sanctuary Hollow, you understand. They'd need a safe road home, and it was our plan to build that road. That meant we needed to rebuild the primary causeway, and we needed to do it in a matter of hours.

Our emergency management so-and-so seemed to think that was an impossible task, but when you're heading up a veritable army of Burrower specialists, impossible is a four-letter word. I can honestly say that those are some of the toughest, smartest, most determined mammals it has ever been my pleasure to work alongside.

 **What was your plan of attack?**

Ms. McCloud was the most familiar with Homestead's layout, so she was the one to coordinate her fellow Blast-Rabbits in locating and securing the explosive packs. Bashers went behind them to reinforce the superstructure. We didn't have a specific need for toxic environment or scuba operations, but those specialists were just as tough as the others. If we didn't have a job for them, they went and _found_ one.

Personally, I wrangled up as many Pathfinders, SAR Techs, and Medics as I could. We went level by level and room by room, checking every last inch of the structure and extracting every single Burrower we came across. I'm proud to say that not one Burrower was left behind that day. Even if they hadn't survived, we did what we had to and made sure they made it home. It was the very least we could do for them, and for their families.

All told, I'm proud to say that the rescuers under my command truly distinguished themselves that day.

 **Your own contributions seem just as noteworthy.**

No, I was just doing my job alongside them. I'd never ask a mammal to take a risk I wouldn't be willing to face myself; any commander who thinks differently isn't worth the title.

In any case, you reckon you've found what you came looking for?

 **Actually, I do have a couple more questions. I understand you were the first ever rabbit to become a Pathfinder?**

Sure was. 'Course, we weren't called Pathfinders back then; it wasn't even a separate position. A lot of us were just diggers who were either crazy enough or brave enough to go where others wouldn't. I reckon that's always been my way. **[He chuckles]** It translates fairly smoothly into rescue work, too.

 **I can see how it would. The other thing I wanted to ask was...well...**

Out with it, son.

 **It's about the way you earned the nickname Sawtooth...**

You want to know if I really chewed through a table faster than a beaver? **[I nod, and he leans in closely]** Do I strike you as the kind of mammal who'd lie about something like that?

 **No, sir.**

Well, there you go then.

~o~o~o~

 **ooooo**

 **"** **Homestead is so much more than just a burrow; she's a symbol."**

Lucille McCloud – Rabbit  
Demolitions Technician (Blast-Rabbit)

 **ooooo**

 **With her dyed fur and several dozen ear piercings, Lucy McCloud looks more like a punk-rocker than a highly-trained explosives expert. At her suggestion, we meet in the park near her home to visit what she insists is 'the greatest food cart in all of Mammalia'. Afterward, we enjoy a walk along the pathway that winds its way through the greenery.**

My father is a florist, and he grows some of the most beautiful orchids you can imagine. My mom is an artist, and she actually has a painting hanging in the National Gallery in Zootopia. They are two of the sweetest, kindest, most supportive parents a girl could ever hope to have. Growing up, they always encouraged me to follow my dreams and take the path in life that I was most passionate about. I'm sure they were hoping I'd follow their example and pursue the traditional fine arts, but I've known what I wanted to do with my life since my eighth birthday. **[She grins]** That was the day my Uncle Charlie and I packed a jack-o-lantern with enough firecrackers to blow it to kingdom come.

 **Did your parents support your decision to go into demolitions?**

Of course. They support all their kids. Take my brother, Murray, for example; he's an accountant, and not only does his office have some of the most beautiful floral arrangement in Bunnyburrow, but he does most of his work on the paw-crafted artisan ledger books my mom made for him.

When I said I wanted to start blowing things up for a living, they didn't even skip a beat. My mom just thinks of it as high-speed sculpting. My dad was mostly just concerned I'd go deaf.

 **I** ** _have_** **been told it's common for Blast-Rabbits to suffer from hearing problems.**

Sorry, say that again? **[She laughs when I begin to repeat myself]** No, I'm just kidding. It's actually way less of a problem these days. The hearing protection we use is seriously cutting-edge, so hearing damage has gotten pretty rare. I've been doing this job for nine years and my ears are just fine. **[I glance at her left ear. Although the injury is old, the outer edge is visibly ragged.]** Well, my hearing is fine, at least.

 **May I ask...?**

Training injury. Turns out that when a Blast-Rabbit tells you to duck and cover, they mean duck and cover _everything._ **[We pause next to a small pond where several children are playing. A bunny and a prairie dog have waded into the water and are taking turns splashing each other.]** I've always liked it up here. With all the hustle and bustle down below, there's something very calming about seeing mammals just going about their lives.

 **What can you tell me about your role during the Homestead incident?**

Same as everyone else's, at least in the beginning; search and rescue. We'd burrow through a cave-in, sweep and clear, evac survivors, then repeat. I was in a team of about thirty Burrowers, mostly diggers with a couple of tradesmammals in the mix. We'd had one of the Chauve-Souris brothers, Andre, leading us through the dark when the evacuation order came down. We'd been high-tailing it back to the top when I saw Mikaere breaking up what looked like a fight, then practically hurling a work-release prisoner back toward the tunnels.

I've known Micky for a long time. Whether he likes it or not, he can be as predictable as the tide sometimes. The second he did that, I knew – _knew_ – he was about to do something all stupid and noble. It took him a minute to reach the same conclusion, but then he was rushing back into Homestead to go be some big damn hero. I told him I'd cover for him, but I wasn't outside for more than a minute before the site manager was on the radio demanding to know where he was. Covering for him was one thing, but I wasn't about to outright _lie_ to the big boss.

I think ordinarily she'd have been pissed off at me for letting him go, but there were slightly more pressing issues at the time. Those bombs weren't going to disarm themselves, were they?

 **That was your responsibility?**

Well, it's not as though I ran through and disabled them all myself; I had a shit-ton of help. I don't know who's tree she had to shake to make it happen, but the site manager had over a hundred and fifty Blast-Rabbits on site less that an hour after Nicky, Micky, & Mike went down the hole. All I did was help coordinate the teams that did the disarming. I'd been doing most of the on-site blasting up to that point, I knew Homestead like the back of my paw.

The nature of the situation meant that for once, Pathfinders weren't the only ones leading the way; instead, one Pathfinder was assigned to a team of six Blast-Rabbits. Together, those teams went section by section and cleared the entire structure of explosives. I showed some of the other Blasters some tricks Micky had taught me from his army days. Maybe they weren't the safest methods for disarmament, but they definitely got the job done; we had the whole structure cleared in just over two hours.

The Bashers were right behind us, firming up the structure. They'd expected to be marching into a giant game of pick-up sticks; I think we were all a little surprised with what they found.

 **How do you mean?**

Homestead was a lot tougher than we'd given her credit for. She'd lost a full _third_ of her support structure and didn't collapse. Sure, there were cave-ins and a shit-ton of damage, but she was still standing. The more sections they reinforced, the clearer it became that Homestead had taken the hit like a goddamn prize-fighter. The remaining support beams had absorbed the extra strain so efficiently that we could have lost another _twenty-five percent_ of them before we'd have been facing a catastrophic collapse.

 **Did you receive any special recognition afterward?**

Me? I got a pay raise and a fancy new job. The Burrowers set up a new position within the Blast-Rabbits. The idea came after we'd cleared the Homestead explosives and redeployed to support the rescuers. That really blew some minds, pun _fully_ intended. Before that, the idea of Blast-Rabbits actively supporting Search & Rescue had never crossed anyone's mind. It worked so well, though, that they decided to try having us roll out with the rescuers full-time, clear obstacles, assess post-explosion damage, and support post-blast recovery operations.

Mikaere, however, just ended up with _that_ ridiculous thing. **[She laughs, gesturing to the statue in the center of the park. Standing nearly twenty feet tall, the Heroes of Homestead monument depicts three mammals standing proudly on a rocky crag; a ferret and a mongoose to either side, and a fox in the middle]** I actually think it's pretty cool looking, but Micky hates it and I love to give him a hard time.

 **What kind of social effect to you feel Homestead has had?**

The word that comes to mind is _profound._ Homestead is the greatest example of interspecies partnership in history because there's just no way any one species could have done what we did that day. Evil mammals tried to destroy her, and they failed _._ They took their best shot, but they couldn't knock her down because the rest of us were there to hold her up. She's a testament to our collective strength and ingenuity.

That's why mammals travel from all over Mammalia to see places like Sanctuary Hollow and the Iron Gate, or to actually follow the same route the heroes took through the burrow and back into the light. It's why Homestead was eventually re-christened as the capital of the Tri-Burrows. **[She gestures around us to Wilde Park, the seventeen-hundred-acre expanse of parkland that sits atop the thriving Homestead mega-burrow]** And it's why there are almost ninety-thousand mammals living here today.

~o~o~o~

 **ooooo**

 **"** **To be a Pathfinder is to be blind to what lies ahead, but unafraid of whatever it may be."**

Pierre Chauve-Souris – Fruit Bat  
Pathfinder

 **ooooo**

 **Pierre Chauve-Souris and his older brother, Andre, were born in the Eweropean Union and immigrated to Mammalia nearly thirty years ago. Joining the Burrowers not long after their arrival, they were among the first Pathfinders and eventually went on to help establish the Subterranean Reconnaissance Branch as a distinct entity within the organization.**

 **Twenty-eight years later, the Chauve-Souris brothers are the longest-serving Pathfinder team in Burrower history.**

It was difficult for Andre and I, leaving our home behind. Given the choice, we'd have rather stayed and tended to our family's cricket farm, but like so many others the blight had left it barren. There was no money, almost no food, and so it fell to us to go out into the world and find work.

 **What brought you here?**

To Mammalia, or to the Burrowers?

 **Both.**

We came to Mammalia because, as far as we understood, it was the land where any mammal could be anything. Of course, no one had mentioned that you had to speak the language and have a degree in something or another, even for entry level work; Andre and I had only graduated from secondary school. We were only passing through Bunnyburrow when we were lucky enough to see a recruiting poster for the Subterranean Habitat Engineering Corps.

 **What was it like to be a Pathfinder in those early years?**

Although the Burrowers were still a very young organization, the growing population was already forcing them to encroach on the Redwall foothills. The risks that came with tunneling there were greater than anywhere else. The caverns there were both plentiful and treacherous. It was critical to know, as they say, the lay of the land.

Pathfinder was an informal assignment then; volunteers who were either courageous or foolish enough to go into the darkness where others feared to tread. It was terrible, dangerous work. We didn't have the resources that are available today; the technical garments or universal rations. Often you would go on reconnaissance with only some warm clothes and a small satchel of food. For mammals that needed it, climbing gear was mostly limited to civilian hardware that rarely fit properly.

Mammals would get lost, constantly. They'd have to backtrack, sometimes as far as the point they started from. There were virtually no experienced spelunkers in the organization, least of all among rabbits. That was why they preferred to have the job done by my kind.

 **Your kind?**

Bats do not fear the dark, you see; not even bats like me. Fruit bats cannot echolocate. Our ears cannot pierce the shadows like our smaller cousins. But our eyes are sharp, our noses keen, and our wings are strong. Even for us, the darkness is an old friend.

 **I understand that you and your brother each led a search team at Homestead?**

That's correct. Wilde did the same. It was unnerving to be working individually, but there were so few of us. Despite our discomfort, we recognized the need to spread out our resources. Andre had gone with McCloud, one of our two Blast-Rabbits, to skirt the eastern edge of the structure. I had been leading Ngata's team along the western edge, and Wilde had gone right down the center with a crew of Bashers to try and reinforce the damaged structure.

 **Were you there when Mikaere Ngata discovered the explosive devices?**

Unfortunately, I was no longer involved at that point. **[He sighs]** A few hours before the evacuation, I had been injured by falling rocks. I had taken a blow to the head and several bones in my wing had been fractured. Though I had endured worse in my lifetime, Andre would not allow me to continue. He had the medical mammals strap me to the cot to prevent me from leaving the field hospital, even as he was returning to duty.

I hated him for that, spat in his face, said he was not my brother. I thank the gods every day that he survived, so that I could beg his forgiveness.

 **You would have gone back in, even though you were wounded?**

Of course. Given the opportunity, I would not have hesitated. I have been conquering these caves for most of my life, one after another, and will continue to do so until they finally conquer me.

 **Why?**

Because it is a Pathfinder's calling, the call that draws us into the deep; to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

~o~o~o~

 ** _A/N:_** _Alfred Tennyson, amirite?_


	11. Pt 10 - The Girl Who Lived

**The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective  
Part 10: The Girl Who Lived  
** _by Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 **ooooo**

 **"** **It's funny how your world can change. Sometimes you'll feel completely blindsided by it, then you'll look back to realize it was a long time coming."**

Judith Hopps – Rabbit  
Pathfinder

 **ooooo**

 **Evening has come and gone in Bunnyburrow, and outside the moon shines brightly over the farm fields. We've just finished dinner, Nick is in the cottage's kitchen doing the dishes, and I'm sitting with Judy in the next room. Over the faint sound of running water, she asks if I would like another slice of pie. I politely decline.**

When I was a kid, I used to have nightmares about foxes. I'd be tucked in bed, and suddenly this fox would come rushing out of nowhere and pounce on me. **[She is interrupted by a snort of laughter from the kitchen and rolls her eyes]** I _suppose_ there's a certain irony there.

When I got trapped inside Homestead, I'd been separated from my partner and best friend. When he came to find me, I was reunited with the mammal I loved. It was a pretty big shift for me to get my head around. Not only was my mind struggling to grasp the fact that Nick had come all the way down to save me, but I was also trying to come to terms with my first reaction upon seeing him; it hadn't been to laugh, to cry, to thank one or possibly _all_ of the gods. It had been to immediately kiss him, my best friend, the fox, a _lot_.

Like, for an embarrassingly long time.

Mammals were actually starting to shuffle their feet awkwardly. **[She clears her throat]** Anyway, I didn't have much opportunity to think about it as we made the ascent back into the light. We were too busy making sure everyone survived the trip. At the time, I think I was kinda glad for that. It's not every day you have to deal with such a massive change the relationship you have with your best friend.

I kept promising myself that Nick and I would talk about things right after whatever was happening. After we made it out of Homestead, after we got to the hospital, after we _left_ the hospital...you get the idea. The problem was that something always got in the way. After we got out my brain decided it was time for a good old-fashioned emotional breakdown, and after we got to the hospital I...well...I pretty much just passed out cold.

Then, from the moment the doctors gave us the all clear and discharged us, we were taken in separate directions and buried neck-deep in investigators. They wanted to know every single thing I'd seen, heard, or smelled. They'd have someone question me for an hour, leave me alone for twenty minutes, then someone else entirely would come ask me all the same questions in a slightly different way.

Although I'd expected the Burrower incident investigation mammals, and I certainly hadn't been surprised when a Deputy from the Tri-Burrow Sheriff's Office came by to take my statement, I _was_ surprised when a pair of Zootopia Police Department detectives came by to visit. They were very polite, but their questions felt significantly more pointed. I knew they were looking for inconsistencies and tried to be as honest and detailed as I could be. I thought I was being a good witness, but months later I learned that I'd briefly been a suspect.

 **What reason would they have to suspect you?**

According to the detective who interviewed me, my story was 'too detailed'. He thought it sounded rehearsed, like I was just telling a story that I'd practiced. **[She chuckles]** Apparently, I was cleared as a suspect when Sheriff Tobin told the detective that he'd been interviewing someone with a degree in criminal justice.

Anyway, after the storm of questioning we were all placed on a minimum of four weeks mandatory leave. For me, that meant going home. For Nick, it meant being stuck in a cell. I went to visit him, but every time I tried to get through I'd never make it past the door. No one said anything outright, but there were rumors that one or more of the work-release prisoners was responsible for the bombings. I mean, we know that isn't true _now_ , but at the time there was still a lot of uncertainty in the air. It was one thing to suffer an accident, but deliberate sabotage had left a lot of scared mammals looking for someone to blame.

Personally, I'd have liked to use that leave to get some actual _rest_ , but of course that wasn't in the cards. I swear the dust had barely settled at Homestead before the town was swarming with mammals from every media outlet you could think of. I swear, journalists are just the worst. **[She winces and gives me an apologetic smile]** Sorry.

 **That's alright. Sometimes we really are the worst.**

 **[She laughs]** Well, for what it's worth, most of the newspaper reporters weren't too bad. They called or stopped by, but they generally accepted it when you told them no. The only real exception was the Zootopia Gazette. **[She notices my reaction and chuckles]** I see you're familiar with their work. One of their reporters actually approached my cousin Taylor at school! He was only five years old and this jerk is shoving a tape recorder in his face, asking how he would have felt if his Aunt Judy had been crushed! He actually used the word _crushed_!

And the television news mammals? They were like locusts! There were days I couldn't even leave the house without being mobbed. They even went after my family; most of my siblings had to wade through a sea of cameras and microphones just to get to work. They were practically crawling over each other to be the most in-depth or hard-hitting. Any piece of semi-interesting footage played over and over. Every catchy quote was repeated again and again and again.

The Burrowers sent someone over from the Public Relations office to give me a little coaching. She gave me some pointers on how to react if I got ambushed and a few canned responses. She also said that when television reporters wanted a good sound bite, they tended to asked questions with no safe answer. Her biggest pieces of advice were to do everything I could to stay off camera, and to not try answering questions I didn't really know the answer to. It seemed like pretty common-sense stuff, but I was still glad she came by to talk.

 **So, you just stayed away from the spotlight?**

When I could, but there were reporters literally camped outside our house. As tempting as it was to just lock myself in my room for a month, I still had obligations to uphold. In between all of that chaos, there were funeral services to attend; so many of them. Most of the reporters were compassionate enough to stay away from those, and the Sheriff's department was happy to deal with the less-respectful ones.

The ZDC allowed the inmates to attend the services as well, but the guards kept all of them – including Nick - separate from the other mammals. As much as I wanted to talk to him, to hold his paw or just have him to lean against, I had to settle for knowing he was close by.

 **When did things begin to calm down?**

 **[She smirks]** When my dad moved the heavy irrigation system from the east field to our front yard. Turns out that reporters don't want to hang around on your doorstep when you can drop a monsoon on them with the flick of a switch. That pretty much kept them at bay until the news cycle moved on to something new. By the time the last of them cleared out, it was time to go back to work.

 **What was that like?**

Weird, honestly; in a lot of different ways. It seemed strange to just get back to the way things were, especially after living through something so...life-changing. We both wanted to talk about everything that had happened, both the collapse and the kiss, but every time one of us tried to start the conversation we'd just end up trailing off into an awkward silence.

What made things worse was the added uncertainty of not knowing whether we _wanted_ things to go back to the way they'd been before. Well, that's not really true. I knew _exactly_ which way I wanted things to go. I just didn't know where he fell on the subject. It was confusing and exasperating, and I think the only thing that kept us from tearing our own fur out in frustration was that we were part of the Homestead Recovery Project. Helping to recon and re-map the cut off tunnels kept the two of us busy for a solid month.

 **When did things change between you?**

Things came to a head about three or four weeks after we'd gone back to work.

Nick and I were doing a recon of a tunnel some diggers had broken into. It wasn't on any of the blueprints, but we had a strong suspicion that it was an unmapped arm of an old copper mine. Bootleggers used to do that all the time back in the twenties and thirties. They'd find a struggling mining operation and pay them for the use of one of their side tunnels, use it to store illegal liquor, and then the mine's owner would just remove that particular tunnel from the official maps. If the police came looking, all they'd find was closed mouths and lots of rocks.

If we were right, then we'd be able to follow the tunnel all the way to the mine's recorded entrance near Aspen Grove in about three hours.

It was pretty easy-going, which wasn't unusual for a mammal-made tunnel and strongly supported our theory, and we were about an hour and a half in when we came to this small hole in the tunnel ceiling. I wanted to see what was on the other side, so I asked him to lift me to take a look. Before Homestead, he would have just grabbed me around the waist and held me up, probably while making some smarty-fox remark about how heavy I was. When the same thing didn't happen there, I turned around to find Nick fidgeting like a buck at an eighth-grade dance.

Well, that was all it took. I gave him my very best death-glare and reminded him that I'd already kissed him, so it was pretty stupid of him to be shy about touching my waist. He just gawked at me for a second, and then he...um... **[She trails off]** Well, the important thing is that we were absolutely right about the tunnel being part of the copper mine. It led us right to Aspen Grove.

 **[From the kitchen]** And it only took us six hours, right Carrots?

 _Nick!_

 **How did mammals react to the change in your personal relationship, especially so soon after Homestead?**

So soon after...Yeah, we might not have been that forthcoming about it. **[She laughs awkwardly]** In fact, we...uh...we _might_ have kept our relationship a secret for a month... or six. Looking back, they probably wouldn't have made an issue out of it, but at the time we just weren't willing to risk Nick's freedom. We were already incredibly lucky that the Department of Corrections chose to overlook the fact that Nick had escaped custody and tried his best to beat up Rourke in the process.

 **Even though Rourke attacked him first?**

 **[She sighs]** It doesn't matter what the circumstances are, escaping custody and attacking a guard are still crimes. They could have easily cancelled his work-release agreement and sent him back to the city to serve his full term. Instead, in recognition of how many mammals' lives he saved, they were willing to call it a push. After that, we didn't want to tempt fate. We only had a few more months until his sentence was up. Until then, he was still a federal inmate.

 **Didn't his time with the Pathfinders shorten his sentence?**

 **[She rolls her eyes]** Yeah, by six lousy months after he'd been promised a year. 'Unforeseen administrative delays', they said. We couldn't really complain, though. Two and a half years was still better than three, and a heck of a lot better than _eight_. Besides, the guards barely paid attention to him anymore, and the new guard captain did away with the control anklet altogether.

 **New guard captain?**

Yup. Apparently, Rourke tried out his 'punch-first' routine on the Search & Rescue Field Commander and got himself knocked out for it. A few days later he got called back to the city, and after that we never heard from him again*. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.

Of course, when the end finally _did_ come around, we were both surprised to learn that Nick had to go back to the city for a couple of days to be officially released. It wasn't easy to see him getting on that train, especially since they had his paws and feet cuffed. As much as I tried to remind myself otherwise, it felt like they were marching him away forever. I wanted to hug him so much, but physical contact was against the rules when he was in cuffs; the last thing either of us wanted was for some stupid minor infraction to delay his release by even a minute.

I just kept reminding myself that he'd be back in a couple of days, and I was at the station two hours early for the train that brought him home. When I saw him again... **[She laughs]** That was the first time I'd seen him in anything other than orange coveralls or recon gear. He was wearing this _awful_ green Pawaiian shirt, ridiculous aviator sunglasses, and a pair of tan slacks that looked like they'd been stuffed in a box for a few years. His fur was a mess, he looked like he'd barely slept the whole time he'd been gone, and I still thought he was the most handsome mammal I'd ever seen.

I'd originally planned to take him out to dinner to celebrate his newfound freedom, but he ended up falling asleep in the truck before we'd even pulled out of the parking lot.

 **Did either of you find it difficult adapting to his new status as a free mammal?**

I wouldn't say it was difficult, but there were definitely a few stumbling points. One of the funniest came just the next day. We'd just finished work and were making our way up the causeway. I'd met up with Nick at the site that morning. He'd been so exhausted the night before that I'd just driven him right to the night-shift quarters on the site to get a good night's sleep.

 **He couldn't have stayed with you?**

I didn't think that would've gone over very well. I already came home from work every day smelling like fox; even if there _was_ a reasonable explanation, some members of my family were starting to look at me funny.

Anyway, we'd just spent an entire shift underground so – just like every other day since we'd started working together – we shared a hug, wished each other goodnight, and started walking in opposite directions. I probably made it about ten paces before it clicked, and when I turned around I wasn't really surprised to find him looking back at me with an amused expression that probably mirrored my own.

 **I don't understand.**

 **[She grins]** Because for the very first time since he'd come to the Tri-Burrows, he _wouldn't_ be getting escorted back to the inmate's quarters with the other convicts. Now that we were off the clock, he was absolutely, one-hundred-percent free to go wherever he wanted, _with_ whoever he wanted, and no one could say a darn thing about it.

That was the first time he'd leave a burrow site of his own volition, for no reason other than because he wanted to. I could tell it felt strange for him - walking away from the site, half-expecting someone to start shouting at him. The two of us actually stood together just inside the site boundary for about ten minutes. Before that day, crossing it without permission could've gotten him shot. I wasn't surprised that he needed a little time to psych himself up.

He finally took the first step and froze the second his foot touched the ground on the other side. He even held his breath for a second, ears flicking around like he expected to hear a gunshot. Then he took a second step, then a third and a forth. Pretty soon he was running down the road, whooping like an idiot. **[She smiles fondly]** He insisted that we walk back to town, and even though it was nearly seven miles I didn't have the heart to refuse.

The entire time he was pointing out everything that caught his eye. It was really something to see it all through his eyes, and I don't think I really appreciated how beautiful the Tri-Burrows can be in the springtime before that day. We were both so wrapped up in the experience that we'd made it all the way back before remembering that Nick _still_ didn't have anywhere to spend the night.

I figured nobody would mind if I found him a place in our hayloft for the night. It was warm and dry, and the next morning we'd figure out what to do in the long term. I honestly meant to go back to my own room after I'd gotten him settled in, but we started talking about this and that. It got late, it'd been a tiring day and I kinda fell asleep. We woke up the next morning to the sound of my cell phone vibrating across the floor. I must've had at least thirty missed call notifications, all from my family.

We started trying to figure out how to explain my absence to my mom and dad. Nick wanted to put off telling them about us until we could figure out the best way to do it, but that really wasn't going to fly. It was one thing for me to come home from work smelling a little bit like fox. They knew who Nick was and had more or less gotten used to the idea of the two of us being in such close proximity. It was another thing _entirely_ for me to not answer my phone all night, then walk into the house first thing in the morning, wearing yesterday's clothes and positively swimming in Nick's scent.

My parents trusted me, but they weren't stupid.

 **What did you end up doing?**

I convinced him to let me take the band-aid approach by telling my family about us right away. We had a semi-valid excuse for keeping our relationship under wraps before, but now that he was a free mammal we didn't have any reason to hide. Even so, I _might_ have been a little forceful with the announcement. **[The nearby fox lets out another amused snort]** Cut it out!

 **Did the relationship encounter any resistance from your family in particular?**

 **[She shrugs]** It certainly didn't go over well with _everyone_ , but it was nothing we couldn't handle.

 **Would you be comfortable giving any examples?**

Well, my mother's reaction was certainly dramatic. **[She laughs]** But I think my older sister, Candice, is probably the best example. She just about had a stroke when she heard the news. She was certain I was suffering from some kind of delayed post-traumatic breakdown and tried to convince our parents to have me 'committed for my own safety.' Nobody paid her much attention, though; this was the bunny who was ready to stage an honest-to-gods intervention when our brother started dating a desert cottontail bunny.

Pop-Pop took a couple of shots at Nick, and Nick fired right back. **[She lowers her voice]** They both act like they can't stand each other, but every time the family gets together the two of them end up sitting on the porch calling each other names and cackling like a pair of hyenas.

Some idiot in Burrower Mammal Resources threatened to split us up. They spouted some nonsense about fraternization and how close, personal relationships between partners would cause turmoil in the 'chain of command.' I'm serious, they actually said that, as if we were in the army or something. Luckily, Pierre was quick to shut them down by asking whether he and his brother Andre could be considered a 'close, personal relationship'.

 **Were any mammals worried about you being involved with a predator?**

Actually, it seemed like most mammals were more concerned by the fact that he was an ex-convict than the fact that he was a fox.

At first, we couldn't even stand close to one another without getting the stink-eye from the older and 'more respectable' mammals in town. Like most things that get the whole town talking, though, the hype died down after about a month, when all the old biddies and cranky old bucks found something new to be indignant about.

Of course, Nick couldn't let them get _too_ complacent. About a year after he was officially released, he and I were called out to a relatively small site just outside the village of Martin Abbey. The village-mammals had contracted the Burrowers for an underground storage facility to keep their food in the summer, and Nick told me the site manager wanted us to do a recon on a tunnel. Even though I'd been certain it had already been cleared, I couldn't find anything in the site logs. When I asked the only other Pathfinder team that had been around that week they swore they hadn't been anywhere near it.

We were about fifteen minutes into the tunnel; I looked away for two seconds, and when I turned back Nick had just up and vanished. I was just wondering if he'd somehow gotten behind me when I heard his voice over my head. I looked up to find an opening in the ceiling, and when I asked him what the heck he was doing up there he responded that he'd found something that was going to change our lives. He grabbed my paw and lifted me up into the biggest quartz cavern I've ever seen.

It was so beautiful; purple crystals all around us, glittering brightly in the light of our lanterns. I was still taking it all in when he cleared his throat, pulled a little box from his pack, dropped to one knee and asked me to marry him. I know he said a lot more than just that because his mouth was still moving, but all I can remember is the rushing sound in my ears and the sensation of every hair on my body standing on end. It felt like I'd been hooked up to a car battery.

 **[From the kitchen]** I recited a _poem_ , Carrots!

He did, too. He let me read it a few days later, after I confessed that I'd kind of blanked out the first time.

 **[From the kitchen]** I wrote it myself! It was _very_ romantic!

It really, really was. **[She sniffs softly, then turns to the kitchen]** Stop it! You're going to make me cry and then he'll write about it in the newspaper! This is where the overly emotional bunny stereotype comes from, you big jerk!

I think my brain was still catching up with current events when he opened the box, and... **[She gestures to the diamond ring on her left paw]** That was seven months ago. The wedding is still a few weeks away, but half the work is going toward _not_ letting it turn into a local media circus. Although why the media would still be interested after so long is beyond me.

 **I take it I'm not invited then?**

 **[She laughs]** Well _now_ you're not.

 **What can you tell me about the Homestead trials?**

Mostly that they took forever to happen. It was nearly eight months after Homestead before they even got started.

 **Did you take part in them at all?**

Not really. I was called to testify at one of the local trials, but to be honest there wasn't much I could say that was of use in court. I'm pretty sure the DA was angling to hook a couple of the jury members with the 'rescued local bunny' bit. Nick, on the other hand, got called to testify in person at least a half-dozen times; both here _and_ in the city. So did Mikaere and Mike.

At one point, all three of them had to go to Zootopia on the same day to appear in court. They had all been scheduled to testify in the morning so they could head home that same afternoon, but some things got delayed and they didn't get to speak until much later in the day. The Zootopia DA's office put them up for the night in a hotel. **[She laughs]** When they got back the next day, all three came shambling off the train like zombies, sunglasses on and coffees clutched in their paws.

 **What happened to them?**

Apparently, they decided to go out for a couple of drinks, which quickly turned into a cross-city pub crawl. Apparently, Nick is quite the tour guide. **[She smiles, shaking her head]** In a weird way, I think Homestead was a bonding experience for the three of them. That, and a general sense of annoyance whenever anyone called them heroes.

 **They feel that's inaccurate?**

More like they feel it's unnecessary. All three of them are infuriatingly humble about the whole thing, always saying stuff like 'I was only doing my job' and 'It was just the right thing to do'. **[She rolls her eyes]** Eventually mammals just stopped trying to honor them in person and started doing it without them.

It started out with a small plaque outside the Iron Gate. They let it go without complaint, hoping that would be the end of it. They really should have known better, because when they didn't object mammals took that as tacit permission to really run with it. Next thing they knew, Wilde Park was dedicated above Homestead, the Burrower home offices were moved to the Ngata Building, and they re-named Black Rock out in the Redwalls to 'The Michael Gatherpole Search & Rescue Training Centre'. **[She laughs]** Mike just about went rabid when _that_ happened, and that was nothing compared to the noise they made about the statue. You'd think the sky had fallen in.

 **What about yourself? Have you received any special recognition for your actions?**

Nothing worth mentioning, but before Homestead the Burrowers never had any awards or medals. They ended up creating a couple, but guess who they all went to? **[She smirks, subtly pointing toward the kitchen]** I didn't expect to get anything, though. Medals go to the rescuers, not the mammals they rescue. And to be honest, I'm fine with that.

 **Why is that?**

Because whether or not I'm getting showered with accolades, that doesn't change that fact that I helped guide those survivors back to the surface. Knowing you're responsible for saving over two hundred lives... **[She shakes her head]** You can't begin to imagine what that's like.

 **What do you think the future holds for you? Do the two of you plan to continue working as Pathfinders?**

 **[She winks at me]** To be honest, I've been giving a lot of thought to what my mom used to say about raising a family. After the wedding we'll probably be looking at adopting some kits. I think a dozen or so, at least to start with. **[From the kitchen comes a sudden splashing sound and a muffled curse. She laughs loudly]**

 **[From the kitchen]** Real funny, Carrots. You're a regular barrel of laughs.

I think we've stacked up enough good karma that the universe might just leave us alone for a little while, so the Pathfinders are stuck with us for the time being. Further in the future, though? I couldn't tell you. I know we both want to keep working together, but we've also been feeling an itch to move on to something new. The trick is finding something that works for both of us. We've actually been looking pretty closely at Tri-Burrow Search & Rescue. I'm pretty sure Mike would put in a good word for us. **[She smirks]** Plus, I already know Nick looks good in orange.

For now, though, I think we'll just focus on making the world a little safer every day.

~o~o~o~

 *** Bill Rourke's disciplinary hearing following the events at Homestead uncovered a pattern of abusive and overtly speciest behavior. Rather than pressing formal charges, the ZDC's Office of Professional Conduct ruled that he be fired without severance or pension.**

~o~o~o~

 **A/N:** The last two chapters are already finished. The only question is how long I make you all wait.

 _Mwahahahaha!_


	12. Pt 11 - Cold Blood

**The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective  
Part 11: Cold Blood  
** _by Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 _[Although these interviews have not been published in their entirety and are edited for size, the statements within are presented entirely in context. -ed.]_

 **ooooo**

 **"The point of a trial is so a mammal can be impartially judged by a jury of their peers, but there wasn't a single mammal in the Tri-Burrows who was anywhere near impartial."**

Myles Tobin – Badger  
Sheriff, Tri-Burrow Region

 **ooooo**

 **Myles Tobin has worked as a law enforcement officer in Bunnyburrow for nearly thirty-five years; the last eighteen as the town's Sheriff. As a Deputy, in the wake of St. Claire, he was one of the mammals responsible for maintaining order in a town consumed with grief. As Sheriff, he was determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past.**

There were a little over thirty burrowers absent from Homestead that day. Most had called in sick or had appointments, but I still sent Deputies out to check each of them. Most were on the level, more or less. A couple were just playing hooky, but no one gave a shit at that point. There were four that weren't, though; an armadillo named Sandra Breivik, a rabbit by the name of Christopher Nichols, a shrew called Frank Scalpellino and a groundhog named Joseph Kaczynski.

All four had been working as electricians at Homestead, and that had given them access to the electrical cabinets where the explosives had been set, but Scalpellino was the only one who ever stood before a judge.

 **Why was that?**

The ZPD picked up Breivik when he tried to board a flight to Pawaii, but it turned out that he hadn't done anything wrong. **[He pauses]** Well, he hadn't done anything illegal, at any rate. What he _had_ been doing was taking a trip to Pawaii with an armadillo who definitely wasn't his wife. Bad time to take a vacation, I guess.

Joe Kaczynski headed to Zootopia. He'd already bought himself a plane ticket to Ewerope and CCTV footage shows him getting off the train and walking away from the central station. No one knows exactly what happened to him after that. When the ZPD canvassed the area, a couple of witnesses claimed they saw a mammal matching Kaczynski's description being forced into a limousine by a couple of polar bears. The next time anyone saw him, the ZPD's marine unit was hauling his frozen corpse out of the Polar Straight harbor.

Chris Nichols never even left town. He committed suicide, presumably out of guilt. At least, that was what the note said. That one always seemed a little fishy to me.

 **How so?**

Supposedly he'd poisoned himself with digitalis, but that always struck me as an unusual choice. He owned plenty of sharp knives. He had rope in the garage and a house with plenty of rafters. There was even a bottle of sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet, prescribed months earlier for insomnia. With all of these things readily available, why did he choose to kill himself with an extremely painful and difficult to obtain toxin?

Based on his suicide note, which suggested that he believed he deserved to suffer, we ultimately determined that it had been an additional form of self-punishment. The conclusion made sense and was supported by the evidence, but I suppose I always thought it seemed a little...odd.

 **Do you believe his suicide was staged?**

I didn't say that. There's nothing to support that kind of claim but the suspicions of an old badger, and unfortunately those don't qualify as evidence.

 **What about Frank Scalpellino?**

He got caught on a cargo freighter heading to Bearmuda. He'd booked passage under a fake name and probably would have made it if the Coast Guard hadn't boarded the vessel for a surprise inspection. He got handed over to the Mammalia Federal Marshal Service, who transferred him to Zootopia.

 **Zootopia? Why not back to the Tri-Burrows?**

Too dangerous. There were the usual demonstrations in front of the statehouse and talking heads on the news, but there was also this undercurrent of anger that seemed to pour out of everyone in the region. If they'd brought Scalpellino back to the Burrows, there isn't a doubt in my mind that _someone_ would've taken a shot at him.

There were plenty of mammals looking to may somebody pay for Homestead. Some folks wanted to have the Site Manager, Delacour, thrown in prison for pulling everyone out; they think more lives could have been saved if she's pressed the advance. Others wanted the safety inspectors brought to task for failing to discover the explosives, even though the bombs had been specifically placed so as not to be found on regular inspections. Some even wanted to see Ngata, Wilde, and Gatherpole locked up for endangering the survivors. Can you believe that nonsense?

Then there were the mammals who figured the only way they could find closure was by taking their grief out on someone else. It happened after St. Claire, and things were no different after Homestead.

 **What do you mean?**

 **[He scowls]** There was a lot of violence after St. Claire. Vandalism was a major issue, particularly against local construction companies. Let's just say that a lot of bricks went through a lot of windows. **[He sighs]** There was a sharp rise in assault cases, too. Mostly construction workers getting jumped on the street or on their way out of a bar. And, of course, there were a few mammals who thought they could get their revenge by finding and killing the ones _they_ felt were responsible. None of them succeeded, but at least one got a lot closer than anyone was comfortable with.

That's why Scalpellino was tried and convicted in Zootopia, where he's currently serving the first of multiple life sentences.

 **Did he reveal who helped facilitate his actions?**

Oh, he named names, alright; too bad it wasn't worth spit.

Scalpellino left rationality behind long before the bombing, and it didn't take much effort for his lawyers to get him declared mentally unfit.

his testimony was deemed 'unreliable' and struck from the evidence record. The way I hear it, his turn on the witness stand was really just a fifteen-minute rant about the evils of the federal government. He claimed that destroying Homestead would be striking a blow for the common working mammal or some nonsense like that. The judge only let it go on because the idiot just kept on making more and more incriminating statements.

 **What about the investigation into the mammal he identified as the mastermind behind the attack?**

 **[He snorts, leaning his chair back]** Well, that was a whole other kettle of fish.

~o~o~o~

 **ooooo**

 **"Journalism and the law have a lot in common; when all is said and done, we're both just searching for the truth."**

Barnabas Westfield – Rabbit  
District Attorney, Tri-Burrow County

 **ooooo**

 **Well into his sixties and a native of Bunnyburrow, Barnabas Westfield began his career as a civil defense lawyer. After the collapse of St. Claire, he joined Otto Hopps in compiling the now famous Hopps/Westfield Report, championed dozens of regulatory reforms for safer housing, and has served the last twelve years as the Tri-Burrow District Attorney.**

 **He invites me into his surprisingly small office and directs me to the seat across from him. Despite his relaxed posture and friendly manner, the rabbit's unwavering gaze makes my chair feel unnervingly like a witness stand.**

I've been knocking around the Tri-Burrow courthouse in one fashion or another for some thirty-five years, going back to my days as a young buck with a law degree and something to prove.

 **Something to prove?**

I'd been born here, sure, but that didn't mean I felt like I belonged here. Four years of university, three at law school, a year of articling, and of course a prestigious two-year internship at Webber, Buckland & Doe – all together, a decade away from the burrows – made me a very different bunny than the one who left. I thought I was the slickest buck in town, and I had the attitude to match. That's probably why so many businesses came to me after St. Claire. Before the dust had even settled there was already – if you'll forgive the expression – blood in the water. Hundreds of grieving relatives and battered survivors were looking to lash out at the ones they'd decided were responsible, and all the local businesses they were going after wanted the leanest, meanest rabbit attorney they could get.

I had more clients than I could shake a stick at and at the outset, I confess I was a little excited. Not only were visions of billable hours dancing in my head, but I figured this was my big opportunity to make a name for myself. I figured that in a year's time, I'd be lounging on a pile of money with a pretty doe under each arm. **[He sighs, shaking his head]** Good gods, I was so naïve.

 **What changed?**

All those interviews, personal accounts, testimonies, photos. Maybe there are lawyers out there who could maintain their objectivity in the face of that much suffering, but I wasn't one of them. Six months after the disaster I was ready to come apart. Those families all found comfort in one way or another – family, community, or even just a sense of closure.

Me, though? My parents were long dead. I only had a few siblings and they had all moved away by then. Community? Hell, I was probably one of the most hated rabbits in town. I was the sneering face of every business they blamed for all those deaths. In the end, I found my comfort in a whiskey bottle. Probably would've stayed that way, too, if I hadn't gotten a wake-up call from one of my father's old friends.

Well, to be fair, the real wake-up call was when his daughter made a halfway decent attempt at drowning me. **[He chuckles]** That doe, I tell you. Sixteen years old and she still threw my drunk tail around like a sack of flour.

Otto told me was going to dig until he found out what happened to St. Claire, then drag it into the light to make sure that kind of disaster _never_ happened again. He just needed my help to pull it off. I was about ready to tell him were to shove it when he said the magic word – closure. That was what I'd been looking for, and if 'switching sides' was what it took to get there, so be it.

 **Could you have imagined it would bring you to where you are today?**

Never. To be honest, if you'd told me back then I'd probably have run for the hills. This position was never an ambition of mine. I expected to be long retired by now, sipping mojitos on some beach in Bearmuda or Pawaii. I would've balked at the idea of becoming a public servant with a too-small office and a too-large case load. Over the years, though, I've learned the value of fighting the battles that need to be fought.

 **What role did your office play in the Homestead investigation?**

Once Frank Scalpellino was captured and transported to the city pending trial, the Zootopia DA's office took over almost entirely. My office, on the other hand, was given the job of compiling every last scrap of evidence we could find to help their District Attorney, Omar Shirazi, build the case.

Omar was adamant, right from day one, that absolutely nothing was missed. Either he or one of his army of ADAs call at least twice a day for updates. At first, I thought he was just being a patronizing prick, or maybe he had his eye on the Mayor's office and thought a big win would help get him there. It was weeks before he finally brought me into the loop, not that I gave him much choice in the matter.

I'd just gotten my fifth call _that day_ from his office, asking plenty of questions and answering none as usual. I decided I'd had it up to my ears with being told what to do, least of all by a camel nearly twelve years younger than myself. I called him up personally and told him that if he kept treating me like his errand boy, I was going to have Scalpellino extradited back to the Tri-Burrows.

 **What did he say?**

To my shock, he actually _apologized_. Then he asked if I was able to come out to his office in the city. It seemed like an odd request, but I had no reason to refuse. I hopped on the next train, and the moment I arrived at the city courthouse he ushered me into his private office. That's where he admitted to me that Homestead was a lot bigger than a few mammals with an axe to grind. Scalpellino wasn't the main suspect; he was just a link in the chain.

Then he poured me a double scotch, sat me down, and revealed who the _real_ target of the investigation was.

 **What was your reaction to that?**

I'll put it to you this way, son...I was really glad we were drinking.

~o~o~o~

 **ooooo**

 **"They were gonna rue the day they screwed over the working mammal."**

Frank Scalpellino – Shrew  
Inmate, Zootopia Federal Penitentiary

 **ooooo**

 **I am allowed to speak with Frank Scalpellino only on the condition that his therapist be present. The only surviving Homestead saboteur, the shrew was charged and convicted on almost a hundred counts of murder. Shortly after his trial, however, he was given a full psychological assessment and declared mentally unfit. Instead of being sent to prison, he was sent to the newly re-opened Cliffside Mental Hospital.**

 **Although he is undergoing treatment, it's extremely unlikely that he will ever be released back into society.**

Lemme guess; you want to know 'why I did it', right?

 **Well...yes, that was going to be one of my...**

Sure, whatever. You're not the first reporter to come here looking for a fucking sound bite.

Lemme tell you something; I'm a third-generation electrician. My father and grandfather were good mammals who spent their lives working their fucking tails off to provide for their families. Then, just cause of one accident, a bunch of jerk-off politicians decide to score a few points with their base with the fucking Housing Protection Act. It gets passed and suddenly there's no work for an honest tradesmammal anymore. Not unless you sign up to work for the government.

 **Didn't the trade unions fight to ensure that tradesmammals working for the Burrowers received the same pay and opportunities for work as they would have independently?**

What's your point?

 **It's been argued that the Burrowers actually created more work.**

Yeah, there was work. But you only get it if you signed on the dotted line. Then they _owned_ you.

 **Aren't the Burrowers a strictly volunte...**

 **[He slams a paw on the table between us]** You're not fucking listening!

 **[Therapist]** Take it easy, Frank.

What? He comes in here... **[He turns back to me]** You come in here spouting the same bullshit as the rest of 'em, and I'm supposed to play nice?

 **The rest of whom?**

All the mammals who decided to line their pockets by killing free-market enterprise. The ones who smile like their doing you a favor while they're taking food off your goddamn table. It was federalized extortion, and if any mammal had the balls to call them out on their shit? **[He snorts]** Whatever. In the end, I bent over and took it like everyone else. I needed money; I wasn't going to get it anywhere else. That didn't mean I didn't still have my pride, though. Being an honest working mammal used to stand for something in this country, and I was gonna stand for something, too.

 **[Therapist]** That's _enough_.

You know what?! Fuck you! I'm fucking tired of choking this shit back! You wanna know why I did it? I did it just so those goddamn rabbits could see their elitist state-run shit fall to pieces! I knew it was about time for someone to shut their shit down, and it turns out I wasn't the only one. There were plenty of mammals who were fed up with a goddamn federal monopoly, and they were happy to help me fix it.

 **They were?**

You better fucking believe it. I'm talking about mammals who're ready to do what's necessary and who don't give a fuck about gutless politicians and their bullshit laws!

 **[Therapist]** Alright, I think this interview is over.

And if you think locking me up is gonna stop them, you're outta your fucking mind! Mammals like you started this, and if you aren't ready...

 **[Therapist]** I mean it! We're done here!

Hey! You fucking look at me! If you aren't ready to give the working mammals in this country what they deserve, then you're gonna end up just like Joe did!

 **[Therapist]** Shut off that recorder right now!

You're gonna get fucking ic-!

~o~o~o~

 **ooooo**

 **"Unless we're talking about an arctic mammal, even the best swimmer will seize up in these waters."**

Bill Darcy – Leopard Seal  
Harbor Patrol Officer, Precinct Five (Polar Straight), Zootopia Police Department

 **ooooo**

 **I sit next to Officer "Duck" Bill Darcy in the rear of a ZPD Harbor Patrol boat. As we race along the perimeter of Zootopia's marine shipping hub, neither he nor the boat's pilot - a grinning arctic wolf - seem to notice the biting wind I'm trying so hard to avoid.**

 **The son of a naval officer, Darcy has served in the ZPD's Marine Patrol Division for over eight years; the sole exception is an eight week-suspension during the height of the Savage Mammals Crisis, along with every other predator officer. Several days after Homestead bombing suspect Joseph Kaczynski vanished in Zootopia, it was Darcy's patrol team who discovered the groundhog's body floating in the outer harbor.**

You warm enough, pal?

 **I'm fine.**

You sure? There's no shame in saying you're not. **[He pushes a thermal blanket toward me, which I gratefully accept]**

 **Thank you. So, how often do bodies turn up in these waters?**

Too damn often. Depending on the season, we could get as many as two a week.

 **Why is that?**

Accidents, usually. Negligent crewmembers on the cargo ships or recreational boaters who weren't following basic safety guidelines; mostly when they're crossing the climate barrier. **[He points into the distance, where a wall of fog nearly three-hundred feet high reaches from the end of the Sahara Square / Tundratown Climate Wall all the way to the far shore]** It's right where the hot and cold atmospheres meet; a quarter-mile of the thickest, nastiest fog you've ever seen, where visibility can be as little as ten feet. Mammals come up from the Sahara coast, get lost, crash into each other...you name it. A lot of them aren't wearing their life jackets either.

One of the dumbest things I hear from temperate-climate mammals is that they don't wear a life jacket because they can swim. Well, I've been swimming in and around these waters for the better part of my life, and I can tell you this; when the water is this cold, none of them can swim for very long. The veins in their extremities constrict and they lose their ability to control their arms and legs. There's no way around it. **[He shrugs]** Not that it matters much.

 **It doesn't?**

Nope. Because even if they _can_ swim, they still can't breathe. It's called the cold shock response; they hit the water, they panic, they draw in liquid in that first uncontrolled gasp, and they drown. If they have heart problems, the cold shock may just trigger a heart attack. A lot of times they're gone before their boat can even turn around.

 **I...see. Do you believe that's what happened to Joseph Kaczynski?**

I doubt it. He sure wasn't dressed for a day out on the water; t-shirt and jeans don't really make for comfortable boating apparel out here. Usually when we find mammals dressed like that, it's because they were wasted. The alcohol makes 'em feel nice and warm, they go for a walk in the dark and sometimes right off the end of a damn pier like the idiots they are. **[He notices my discomfort]** Look, I'm not trying to sound like an asshole, but I got no patience for stupid and it kills me to have to recover the body of some dumb seventeen-year-old who didn't know well enough to stay sober.

That was the weird thing about Kaczynski, though. He'd been stone sober when he hit the water; no booze, no drugs, no nothing. He hadn't been robbed, either. His phone and wallet were still in his pockets, money and cards safe inside. He didn't have any defensive wounds, and there was even a plane ticket in his pocket. It was like he just decided to go for a swim.

 **Have you ever seen that sort of thing before?**

Yeah, sometimes. It's usually a sign that the victim pissed off the wrong mammal. A lot of criminals in Tundratown get killed that way; they call it 'getting iced'. From a forensics standpoint it's pretty tough to trace. Even if the victim got roughed up first, they freeze before the bruises can form. Makes it tough to pin it on anyone.

 **Did Joseph Kaczynski cross the wrong mammal?**

Can't say for sure. They've never been able to link his death to anyone; not officially, at any rate.

 **What do you think?**

Personally? I don't think he crossed the wrong mammal; I think he crossed the _worst_ mammal.

~o~o~o~

 **ooooo**

 **"Sometimes the easiest criminal to catch is the one who thinks he's untouchable."**

Wilson Dell – Grey Wolf  
Special Agent, Zootopia Bureau of Investigation

 **ooooo**

 **Special Agent Wilson Dell has been with the bureau for nearly thirty years. As part the ZBI's Major Crimes division, his team played a significant part in the Homestead investigation. We meet at the Snarlbucks across the street from the ZBI Building, where I join him for what he admits is his fifth cup of coffee that day.**

Forget what you've seen in the movies, where homegrown terrorists always use high-tech explosives to attack something. If Scalpellino had been some pseudo-communist or anti-government extremist, he'd never have had the budget for that. He probably would have used ANFO instead - good old-fashioned fertilizer bombs. The use of military-grade plastic explosive at Homestead told us right away that things weren't what they appeared to be – they aren't exactly sold at the local Co-op.

 **Could they have been stolen and sold by someone in the Zootopian Armed Forces?**

That was possible, but not likely. Ordinance like that is all serialized, and once it's reached it's destination it's nearly impossible to lose track of. If someone had removed it from an armory somewhere, it'd be easy to figure out who did it and when. However, those very serial numbers linked the bombs back to a shipment of military ordinance that'd passed through the Polar Straight docks. When the shipment arrived at its destination, a Zootopia Armed Forces depot just outside the city, the supply officer who received it reported that it was a crate short.

 **Did the investigation of that report indicate where the crate might've gone missing?**

On the contrary, an investigation wasn't even conducted. Despite what the officer claimed, the shipment that arrived at the depot matched the shipping waybills and customs documents perfectly. On paper, there was nothing missing at all. We were certain that we'd hit a dead end until we learned that the Coast Guard had apprehended Frank Scalpellino and handed him over to the Marshal Service. That was when we started _really_ digging into Scalpellino's personal history and uncovered a lot of falsified details from when he applied to the Burrowers that hadn't set off any alarm bells on the first pass.

Eventually, though, we were still able to link him back to his great uncle; a shrew by the name of Alphonse Scalpellino. That changed _everything_ , because Alphonse was consigliere to a major figure in Zootopia's criminal underground - an arctic shrew that went by the moniker 'Mr. Big'. Big's real name is Vito Padrone, and at that point he hadn't exactly been our top priority. **[He chuckles]** I'm sure that you, of all mammals, probably remember that we had some more serious issues to deal with at the time.

In any case, that's why we didn't take much notice when Padrone's daughter, Fru Fru, was killed in an accident a year earlier. Ms. Padrone was exiting a department store when a shoplifter fleeing the ZPD decided to cut through Little Rodentia, and wasn't watching where he was going. He was a weasel - not much bigger than the surrounding rodents – but he was big enough; one solid kick was all it took to put her in the hospital. She died of her injuries not long after, and the ZPD was fishing the weasel's frozen corpse out of the harbor less than twenty-four hours later.

Mr. Padrone was a widower, and she'd been his only child. His own mother had passed away a few months earlier, leaving him with no living family at all. Statements taken much later from some of his employees indicate that he began to develop a fixation with the idea of family. One of them went so far as to say that Padrone had become obsessed with creating a legacy worthy of his father's approval, even though the elder shrew had died nearly a decade earlier.

It's likely that was when the Tri-Burrows came onto his radar. After St. Claire and the subsequent introduction of the Housing Protection Act, Padrone's father bought up the failing construction companies. Apparently, Vito himself hadn't even been aware of those holdings until his mother passed away, and we believe that he intended to make them profitable again.

 **You believe?**

Despite all the signs that pointed to his involvement, he was never brought up on any charges related to Homestead. However, based on the evidence we did managed to gather, it looks like he'd planned to use Homestead's collapse to discredit the Burrowers as an organization.

 **Wouldn't it have been obvious that Homestead had been sabotaged?**

Actually, we're pretty sure that was the idea. The intent was never to simulate a real collapse, but to foster the idea that there were terrorists and saboteurs _inside_ the Burrowers, damaging the basic level of trust that the citizenry placed in them. Then, once mammals started clamoring for the government to do something, he'd pay off the right politicians and lobbyists to get the Housing Protection Act repealed and have the Burrowers shut down. The construction companies _he_ owned would be the only ones poised and ready to begin accepting contracts, creating a _de facto_ monopoly in the Tri-Burrow region.

It's likely that he sent his consigliere's great nephew there to stir up trouble, because Frank Scalpellino relocated to the area only a few months after Fru Fru's death. Considering how many older blue-collar mammals lost their jobs after the Tri-Burrows passed the Housing Protection Act, it wouldn't have been too difficult for Scalpellino to find and radicalize some of their children; especially with that 'power to the working mammal' nonsense.

And as for those missing explosives? Turns out that the shipping dock they'd gone missing from belonged to a shell company owned by none other than the Padrone crime family.

 **You said earlier that military-grade explosives aren't used by domestic extremists.**

That's right.

 **Then why use them, if the intent was for Homestead to look like a terrorist attack?**

 **[He chuckles]** Padrone was a mobster, not a terrorist. I doubt he knew the difference.

 **Why is it, given what you've told me, you still didn't have enough evidence to charge Vito Padrone?**

In my opinion, we had _more_ than enough evidence. What we were missing were the only three mammals whose testimony could have brought our whole case together. Kaczynski and Nichols were dead, and Scalpellino managed to get himself diagnosed as delusional. That made his testimony useless, and the DA wasn't willing to move forward without it.

Padrone must've been feeling pretty pleased with himself. I can still picture him sitting next to his lawyer, that smug look on his face as we finally had to discount him as an official suspect in the Homestead investigation. **[He grins]** That's why I would've loved to have seen his expression a month later, when that SWAT team kicked in his front door.

 **But if he wasn't a suspect...?**

We may not have been able to press any _Homestead_ -related charges, but the warrants and subpoenas we got to investigate his alleged connections to Homestead gave us unprecedented access to his personal and business holdings. He and his attorneys were happily watching our Counter-Terrorism unit spin its wheels amid a media circus, trying to link him to the bombings. All the while, Major Crimes was digging up enough evidence to get him dead-to-rights on about two dozen other charges. **[He laughs]** He might not have gone to prison over Homestead, but we still made sure that bastard will never breathe free air again.

~o~o~o~

 **ooooo**

 **"We may be evolved, but deep down we are still animals."**

Vito Padrone (aka. Mr. Big) – Arctic Shrew  
Inmate, Zootopia Federal Penitentiary

 **ooooo**

 **It's only with special permission from the District Attorney's Office that I'm granted permission to speak with Vito Padrone.**

 **Eighteen months ago, the arctic shrew known as Mr. Big was tried and convicted on charges including multiple counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, obstruction of justice, tax evasion, illegal gambling, extortion, and loansharking. Once a major player in the Zootopian criminal underground, Padrone is now a permanent guest of the Zootopia Department of Corrections, sentenced to multiple life sentences, without the possibility of parole.**

You have gone to a great deal of trouble to speak with me, Mr. Grayson. I'm curious what answers you feel I can provide that are not already a matter of public record? Or rather, that you could not uncover on your own. You have quite the reputation for tenacity when in pursuit of a story.

 **I've found that persistence tends to get results.**

 **[He smiles slightly]** A point that several of the mammals in here would've done well to remind themselves of, wouldn't you agree? You have quite a few fans behind bars, you know.

 **I'd like to discuss the role you played in the attack on the Homestead mega-burrow.**

I'm sure you would, but of course you know that the ZBI determined I had no part in those events.

 **You did have several interests in the Tri-Burrows, though?**

I had little 'interest' in rabbits _or_ their territory, in point of fact. However, my father had invested in several Tri-Burrow construction firms in the late eighties. Like any sensible businessmammal, I simply wished to see those fims become profitable again.

 **Is that why you sent your consigliere's nephew, Frank Scalpellino, there from the city?**

On the contrary, poor Francesco was sent away for the sake of his own health. It's so tragic when mental illness affects one so young, and I arranged for him to live a less stressful life out in the country. His father is a dear friend of mine; how could I do anything less?

 **And that Scalpellino was involved in a bombing attack against your largest potential competitor?**

As I said, Francisco is not well; it's possible the poor mammal thought he was acting on my behalf. Any benefit I might have gained from his actions would have been nothing more than the tragic result of a delusional mind. Thank goodness he's receiving the treatment he needs.

 **Are you aware that the explosives used in the attack were stolen from a Zootopian Armed Forces ordinance shipment?**

If you say so.

 **And that the dock that shipment was received at was owned by one of your own business holdings?**

I have... _had_ a great many business holdings. I didn't feel the need to micromanage them all, nor could I be fully aware of every transaction they took part in.

 **How do you feel about all of the lives lost in the attack? Or the hundreds more that could have resulted had the attack been successful?**

 **[He snorts]** Unfortunate, but I sincerely doubt the world is in danger of running out of rabbits.

 **So, even with significant evidence to the contrary, you still assert that you had no involvement in the Homestead bombing?**

That was the ZBI's finding. Who am I to disagree?

 **Even though you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison regardless?**

I don't need you to remind me of what my situation is, and I feel you've wasted your time coming here.

 **But you're...**

We have nothing more to discuss, Mr. Grayson. You should be on your way. **[He smirks]** I'll give Ms. Bellwether your regards, though, when I see her next . I'm sure she'll be pleased to hear from you.


	13. Pt 12 - The Parting of the Ways

**The Legacy of St. Claire – A Twelve-Part Retrospective  
Part 12: The Parting of the Ways  
** _by Eddie Grayson, Zootopia Herald_

 **ooooo**

 **In bed above we lay asleep,  
while greater risks wait further deep.  
In darkest hour the world shall know,  
we can all depend on the beasts below.**

\- Inscription on the Heroes of Homestead monument

 **ooooo**

 **Nick Wilde lounges on the bench beside me as I wait for my train back to Zootopia. It's late enough that the commuter train into the city has long-since departed. I will be taking the last train of the day, which is due to arrive soon and likely won't reach Zootopia until well after midnight. Unsurprisingly, the platform is largely empty.**

 **As we talk, his gaze occasionally drifts to the eastbound track and in the direction of his former home, and I ask him if he ever misses the city where he was born.**

Sometimes, I guess. I think I miss the Zootopia I remember from when I was young. I'm not saying it was a shining beacon of peace and civility, but at least we didn't have to worry about things like that Vulnerable Mammal Protection Act. You remember that insane piece of legislation that Bellwether tried to push through? **[He shakes his head]** I can't believe how close that came to becoming an actual law. You know it had provisions for predator-only neighborhoods and shock collars? Actual, honest-to-gods, _shock collars_. Unbelievable.

It's bizarre to think about how close the city came to tearing itself apart, just because some speciest sheep used those savage mammal cases to push her agenda. Who knows how much worse things might have gotten if she hadn't been exposed by that reporter...from the...Herald... **[He turns to stare at me]** Wait a second...you're not...are you _that_ Edward Grayson?

 **Yeah, that's me.**

How did I not...? I can't believe I didn't make that connection! I'm an _idiot_! Didn't you win a Pawlitzer prize for that story?

 **I'd rather focus on** ** _your_** **story, if that's alright.**

Oh. Yeah. **[He nods slowly]** Yeah, no problem. I totally understand.

 **Thanks.**

Anyway, like I was saying, I'll probably never go back. Not permanently, anyway. Even if things are a lot better now with that whacked-out sheep behind bars **[He gives me a quick wink]** , there's nothing left for me there but memories. No family left in town, and the few friends I still had when I left skipped town a long time ago.

I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but about a year after I got here my old partner showed up to spring me. He was a fennec fox, and he just appeared out of the blue with a set of lock-picks and a plan for us to make for the Pacific. He figured that I'd leap at the chance to go with him.

 **Why didn't you?**

I was still half-asleep and not really thinking straight. Every time he tried to convince me to go, my mind kept looping back to the same conclusion; if I ran away, Carrots would be on her own. We just finished training and I couldn't accept the idea of leaving. I told him as much, he called me a few things I guarantee you wouldn't be allowed to print, and that was the last I ever heard of him. To be honest, I sometimes wonder if Finn was ever really there or if it was just a dream. Either way, I'd apparently made my choice.

 **Since your release, have you ever thought about travelling somewhere else?**

Sure, of course I have. Last month marked four years since that judge sent me out to the Tri-Burrows, a little over two since Homestead, and this is still the only place outside the city I've really been. Carrots and I have a ton of things we want to see, though. We've got a big map up on a wall at home with pins marking all the different places we're going to visit, but home is always going to be the same place. It may not be perfect in Bunnyburrow, but everything I could ever want is right here. **[He smiles]** It's where our family lives.

 **Was it difficult to keep your relationship a secret?**

Ugh! You have no idea! It felt like espionage; coded messages, secret rendezvous...honestly, it was exhausting sometimes.

It's not as though we were ashamed or anything. At the end of the day, it came down to the fact that I simply wasn't a free fox. Even though the end-date of my adjusted sentence was getting closer, I was still only one red stamp away from serving my full term in an actual prison. We didn't want to take the risk of someone deciding they didn't like the idea of a local girl and some shifty convict being together. It wasn't ideal, but we made it work. I may have been restricted to my bunk after lights out, but if she and I were out doing reconnaissance? All you need is a packed lunch, a few candles, and a portable BlueFang speaker to turn any dark cavern into a romantic getaway.

When my prison sentence finally did come to an end, I learned I'd have to go back to Zootopia for out-clearance. Administrative stuff, mostly, but I still had to be there in person. Leaving was strange. The feeling of being locked in pawcuffs and marched away from the mammal you love...that's not really something you ever really ready for.

 **[He points to a spot nearby]** That's where I stood, waiting for the train. Carrots stood an 'appropriate' distance away. I know it sounds ridiculous, but as I boarded the train a part of me was afraid that if I left Bunnyburrow, I'd never find my way back. I spent the entire trip staring out the window, as if I were trying to memorize every detail of the route. I hadn't been certain how I'd feel when I saw Zootopia again, but the moment I laid eyes on the city I knew – right in my core – that it wasn't my home anymore.

What followed was, without a doubt, the longest forty-eight hours of my life. It would have been a lot quicker if I'd done a regular term in prison, but the work-release program came with a ton of red tape. I had to get a full physical and get a psych evaluation done, then I had to sign a stack of papers about as tall as I am that stated I **[He clears his throat]** 'Formally released the Zootopia Department of Corrections from any liability or responsibility with respect to any injuries or illnesses, or symptoms thereof, resulting from my activities with the Subterranean Habitat Engineering Corps.'

I wanted to mess with them _so much_ , like by signing half the forms as Wicholas Nilde or something. I figured it was the least I could do to pay back the 'administrative issues' that delayed my release for half a year. But as much as I wanted to see them gnashing their teeth in frustration, it was nothing next to my need to get back to Bunnyburrow. I dotted every 'i' and crossed every 't' with a smile, was officially released from the loving care of the ZDC, and walked out of there with nothing to my name except the clothes on my back and a check for thirteen-hundred bucks. That was the remaining balance of my 'wages' over the last two years, and I already knew what I was going to spend it on.

I very briefly contemplated visiting a jeweler's shop before I left the city, but for a fox that's just asking for trouble. Instead, I just kept my head down and practically sprinted for the railway station. I just missed the afternoon express, so I ended up having to take the evening commuter train instead. That meant I wouldn't get into Bunnyburrow until pretty late, but the upside was that the train had a forty-minute stopover in Ft. Muridae.

 **Ft. Muridae?**

It's a rodent town about sixty miles west of Bunnyburrow, and home to probably the finest diamond mining operation in Mammalia.

 **Why was stopping there significant?**

Because their local jewelers are just as amazing as their mines. More importantly, they work fast. When my train left Ft. Muridae station, my pocket was thirteen-hundred bucks lighter and one diamond ring heavier.

As predicted, it was well after dark when the I finally pulled into Bunnyburrow Station, and I saw Carrots waiting for me on the platform the moment I stepped off the train. If she hadn't been dressed differently, you'd have sworn that she hadn't moved an inch since I'd left.

I could really vocalize what I was feeling, knowing that I was back in Bunnyburrow on my own terms and that no one could force me to leave. I don't think she could either, because she just took my paw and we walked back to her truck together. Of course, then I _very romantically_ fell asleep before we'd even left the parking lot. She dropped me off at the site we'd been working at in the weeks leading up to that point, I got a room in the night-shift quarters, and I was probably asleep again before my head hit the pillow.

When I woke up the next day... jeez, that was weird. I knew I was a free mammal, but I didn't really _know_ it. Does that make sense? Believe it or not, when the day came to an end I almost forgot I was allowed to leave the site; Carrots practically had to remind me I could. Even then it took some time to get myself pumped up. I mean, for all intents and purposes, the edge of a site had represented the edge of the world. Once we were across, I actually talked Carrots into walking the seven miles back to Bunnyburrow, just so I could say I did it. Honestly, even if we'd been out at Homestead I still would have been tempted to walk the full twenty-eight miles back into town.

There was nothing stopping us from finally telling her family; the fact that we'd been together for half a year and kept it hidden. We'd been so focused on _keeping_ the secret that we hadn't really considered what we'd do after it didn't need to be a secret anymore.

Personally, I was in no rush to tell Bonnie Hopps that I was sleeping with her daughter. Carrots didn't want to wait, no matter how much I tried to convince her otherwise. I just wanted her to give me time to come up with an easy way for her to reveal that she was in love with a fox, we'd been together since Homestead, and that there wasn't anything that anyone could say to change that.

I managed to float that idea for about fifteen minutes before she decided to take matters into her own paws. **[He chuckles]** That bunny isn't really known for her patience.

 **How so?**

By dragging me by the tail into her parent's living room and loudly announcing that she was in love with a fox, we'd been together since Homestead, and that there wasn't anything that anyone could say to change that. I tell you, that rabbit is a force of nature.

 **How was that received?**

Mostly with stunned silence, but when it's coming from upwards of a hundred rabbits, you wouldn't believe how deafening silence can be. After a torturous minute of that, Bonnie comes marching up to us, gives me a once-over, turns to Carrots and pronounces that no daughter of hers was going to get married to a felon. I'll admit my mind got a little hung up on the 'married' bit – I hadn't _actually_ proposed at that point, after all - but I still remember the devastated look on Judy's face when Bonnie stormed off.

She ran after her mother – I should mention that she still had a firm grip on my tail at this point – and when we got into the kitchen we found Bonnie yelling into the telephone. I found out later that she had the actual Governor on the line. As in, Governor Johnathan Quincy Thumper III, on the phone, getting a screaming earful from my girlfriend's mom.

 **What was she saying?**

I could just tell you, but I'm going to do you one better. **[He retrieves a novelty carrot pen from his pocket. Turning it over, he reveals that it is also a voice recorder]** I was lucky enough to have this on me at the time. Carrots gave it to me a little while after we started working together and it became kind of a good luck charm. I'm actually thinking of playing this at the wedding, but since you won't be here for that, I figure you deserve a sneak preview. **[He presses the play button]**

 ** _"_** ** _...o, YOU'RE not listening, Johnny! Your head came with two ears and one mouth for a reason, so shut one and open the other two! That fox is a hero, and you damn well know it! My daughter Judy loves him, he loves her, and that all there is to say about it! I'm not going to have a convict in this family, so you're going to grant that young mammal a full pardon or so help me I'll drive over there and..."_**

 **[He pauses the recording, returning the pen to his pocket]** You get the idea. Her dad seemed a little uncertain, but in the end, he followed his wife's lead. I'm not trying to make it sound like Stu is some kind of doormat. Far from it, because Bonnie has followed his lead just as often. Those two have a hell of a marriage; partners all the way.

Her siblings were a real mixed bag. Some of them hated me, and I'm sorry to say that a couple still do. I guess letting go of prejudice is tougher for some mammals than it is for others. On the other side, some of her siblings thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread. A few of the more rebellious bunnies in town apparently decided to follow her example and began to pursue their own 'exotic' relationships. Personally, I think a couple of them were just looking for someone to blaze the trail for them. **[He smirks]** Or maybe...y'know... _find_ a new _path_ for them? Eh? See what I did there? With the whole finding paths...thing...

 **What was the response from the older generations?**

Jeez, tough crowd.

Well, her granddad had a few choice words for me, and I fired a few back. He's got a good sense of humor, though. We get along well enough these days. I wish I could say the same about all the older and more conservative bunnies in town. It seems like for every one of them who came around, there were still another two clutching their pearls and wringing their handkerchiefs over the whole scandalous affair. You'd think that with such sharp ears, rabbits would know better that to make snide remarks where folks can hear them.

Truth be told, I think a lot of them had convinced themselves that Carrots was just 'playing on the wrong side of the tracks'. They probably figured she'd eventually come to her senses and find a nice buck to settle down with.

At least we knew Mikaere and Mike were in our corner. Those two ended up becoming a couple of the best friends I've ever had, which was lucky at the time since Carrots had just been promoted to girlfriend. I was definitely glad to have them along when I had to go back to the city _again_ to testify in court.

 **What was it like, testifying at the Homestead Trials?**

The more I think about it, the more appropriate the word 'disappointing' feels. After everything, all the bloodshed, all the fear; finding out it had all been about _money_? It just felt so...I don't quite know how to put it. It felt like it wasn't a good enough reason. Like it somehow cheapened what we'd been through. There was no evil villain or monster under the bed; just a greedy old shrew who valued business over mammals' lives.

 **You were associated with Mr. Big prior to your arrest and incarceration.**

Yeah...yeah, I was. I'm really not proud of that time in my life, but it is what it is.

 **How did you feel when you learned that he was involved with the bombing?**

Surprised, honestly. For better or worse, I'd done my best to associate with relatively good mammals. Big might not have been a saint, but he and the mammals that worked for him followed a code of honor. He refused to have anything to do with drugs, prostitution, or even guns, and he sure as hell wouldn't put up with anyone that did. He took care of his territory, too. Sure, the work crews hired by the city charged considerably more than a normal contract rate, and maybe their financial records didn't always line up perfectly at the end of the quarter, but the work still got done on time and got done right. In a way, Tundratown was the safest and best maintained district in the city.

 _That_ was the Mr. Big I'd known.

 **And now?**

I dunno. The evidence is certainly against him, but back when I'd known him... **[He sighs]** I don't know if _respected_ is the right word, but before the ZBI investigation I would never have believed he was capable of ordering the deaths of hundreds of innocents, just so some of his businesses could turn a profit. But with Fru Fru gone, who knows? I always thought she brought out the best in him; maybe she just held back the worst.

When all was said and done, I was happy when they were over. I was able to close the book on the whole thing and start really looking forward to my life with Carrots.

 **Was that when you asked her to marry you?**

Yeeeeaaaa...not exactly. The ring was still burning a hole in my pocket, but I kept coming up with reasons for why it wasn't the right time.

At first, I'd told myself that I was letting Judy get used to not-incarcerated Nick. Then it was important to enjoy dating without the secrets. Then it was 'letting her family get used to me'. Mike had started making fun of me around the six-month point. Mikaere showed a bit more restraint, but by month eight even he was calling me a wuss. All told, it was almost a year before I finally gathered up the courage to pop the question. And I managed to pull it off in style if I do say so myself.

 **You wrote a poem, as I recall?**

That's right. A loving and heartfelt poem that you and your readers will never, ever see.

I've actually had a little fun with the wedding planning. I mean, I was joking when I told Mikaere and Mike they'd have to fight it out to see which one of them got to be best mammal, but I've got the sneaking suspicion they might actually do it. **[He laughs]** The trick is going to be taking bets without them noticing, but the smart money is gonna be on Mike; he's smaller, but he's scrappy.

Things got a little restless in town after that, at least for a little while. I thought the prudes and pearl-clutchers had been bad before, but all the fuss they made the first go around was _nothing_ compared to the reaction when the news of our engagement got out. To listen to them, you'd think the damn sky was caving in. Lucky for me, having a title like 'Hero of Homestead' pretty much overruled anyone else's objections.

 **How do you feel about being one of the Heroes of Homestead?**

Honestly, it's always made me a little uncomfortable. Mammals wanted to put the three of us on a pedestal and call us heroes but being on a pedestal is a crappy place to be. You just get to stand there and try to look heroic while everyone stares at you, and if you mess up it's a long fall back to the ground. If I go into Snarlbucks, I don't want to be The Great Nicholas P Wilde, Hero of Homestead; I want to be Venti Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte with extra whipped cream, thanks and have a nice day.

I think you know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, that's why we kept on politely declining whenever they tried to give us medals and awards. Well, Mikaere and I declined; Mike just kept ducking them till they gave up trying to pin him down. You'd think they'd have taken a hint, but bunnies can be pretty determined when they've got the right motivation. Eventually they figured that if we weren't going to accept their praise, they'd just start honoring us without our permission.

That said, I guess I can't blame anyone that calls us heroes. I think that after any disaster, mammals tend to go looking for heroes. I think they need to believe that when everything went to hell in a handcart, there was at least _someone_ who wasn't afraid.

I'm not a hero, though. If anything, I think I'm kind of a coward.

 **What make you say that?**

It was kind of like when the judge offered me a choice between prison and the Burrowers.

I wasn't ignorant of the dangers at Homestead. I knew that there were better odds of me dying than coming out. I knew that the odds of my being able to find and rescue her were even steeper. I even understood how unlikely it was that she was even still alive. I didn't make my choice out of hope or nobility or courage. I didn't feel some call to heroism and I _definitely_ wasn't being selfless.

No, there's only one reason I went back into Homestead.

 **[He gestures behind me, and I turn to see a smiling Judy Hopps approaching from the station's entrance]**

Because I wasn't brave enough to live without her.

~o~o~o~

It was Sunday night when my train pulled away from Bunnyburrow station, and I looked out the window to see a fox and a bunny haloed in the station's lights, waving goodbye. She wrapped an arm around his waist and leaned against him happily. After a few minutes, I was too far away to tell them apart. A few minutes after that, even the station itself had vanished from sight.

It was Sunday night, and I'd spent the last two days in a town that many mammals couldn't even point to on a map, collecting stories about events many know about yet shockingly few mammals in Zootopia have ever taken the time to learn about. Until recently, I'd been no better.

It was Sunday night, the weekend was over, and the next day was Monday. I'd be returning to work. I wouldn't be the only one.

I was in the offices of the Zootopia Herald the next morning, sitting at my desk and trying to compile everything I'd learned into some kind of narrative. It was an otherwise uneventful day. At worst, I could have spilt some coffee on my shirt.

In Bunnyburrow, a fox and a rabbit were several hundred feet underground. They were crawling through caverns that haven't seen light in tens of thousands of years, marking the way for the engineering teams behind them. It was an otherwise uneventful day. At worst, they both could have been killed.

The more I consider the incredible risks they face every day, the more I find myself utterly in awe of the casual acceptance they have for their line of work. For them, it's just a part of the job; a danger that they accept in exchange for the opportunity to help their fellow mammals. Their attitude makes it easy for me to imagine the pair of them as firefighters rushing into a burning building or police officers walking a beat, aware and accepting of the threats they face in order to keep the world on an even keel.

I have no doubt about how the pair would regard my awe and admiration. They'd brush it off, insisting that they'd only been doing their jobs; I know the feeling. I've done the same, many times, and it's been eye-opening to experience it from the other side. Perhaps that's why their story resonated with me so powerfully, as I hope it has with you.

I can only hope that I've told it properly. I hope I've done justice to the mammals who, at a time when our city was ready to tear itself apart over our differences, didn't hesitate to come together for a greater cause. They stood not as many species cooperating, but as one people, united by a single struggle. In doing so, they've shown us that we only need to come together to see the truth - that the things that unite us are far greater than those that divide us.

~o~o~o~

-END-

~o~o~o~

 _Notes_ _: Although the story itself is complete, I'll be posting a bonus material chapter soon! It will include my full voice cast, an Easter egg/reference guide, a brief deleted scene, a biography for the intrepid Eddie Grayson, and some of my own commentary mixed in._


	14. BONUS MATERIAL

**BURROW - BONUS MATERIALS**

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

 **VOICE CAST**

 _One of the things that helped me write this story was by putting a voice to it. That let me play it back in my head and actually hear the character speaking. It was easy for the canon characters, but it meant having to assign a voice to each original character, too._

 _I looked for actors and actresses whose accent, tone, intonation, and cadence that best reflected the character I was trying to create. Some of them are still the first voice I picked for them. For example, I always heard Mike Gatherpole's voice as Steve Buscemi. Anton McMeadow, on the other hand, started out stuffy and British but changed to something much rougher as the character evolved._

 _Here's my voice cast, just as I imagined them. If you're not familiar with them, feel free to roll on over to YouTube to have a listen. Then, if you're so inclined, try going back and re-reading some of the story with that new voice in mind. Does it change the character for you?_

 **CAST** (In order of appearance)

 **Eddie Grayson |** _Charlie Cox_

 **Otto Hopps |** _Ed Asner_

 **Nicholas Wilde |** _Jason Bateman_ **(Original Cast)**

 **Anton McMeadow |** _Jonathan Banks_

 **Judy Hopps |** _Ginnifer Goodwin_ **(Original Cast)**

 **Mikaere Ngata |** _Jemaine Clement_

 **Michael Gatherpole |** _Steve Buscemi_

 **Gideon Grey |** _Phil Johnson_ **(Original Cast)**

 **Bonnie Hopps |** _Bonnie Hunt_ **(Original Cast)**

 **Patricia Delacour |** _Allison Janney_

 **Victor "Sawtooth" Odynski |** _Sam Elliot_

 **Lucy McCloud |** _Chloe Bennet_

 **Pierre Chauve-Souris |** _René Auberjonois_

 **Sheriff Myles Tobin |** _Tommy Lee Jones_

 **Officer "Duck" Bill Darcy |** _Callum Keith Rennie_

 **DA Barnaby Westfield |** _Gerald McRaney_

 **Frank Scalpellino |** _Bobby Cannavale_

 **Special Agent Wilson Dell |** _Clark Gregg_

 **Vito Padrone (Mr. Big) |** _Maurice LaMarche_ **(Original Cast)**

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

 **EASTER EGGS & REFERENCES**

 _I love inserting little pop-culture references into my stories, just to see who catches them. In case you missed any, I've listed the significant ones here. I've also included some canon and fanon references than some readers might not be aware of – mainly because not everyone is a huge nerd like me._

 **~o~**

 **CHAPTER TITLES** :

Each chapter is named after an episode of Doctor Who.

 **~o~**

 **DARK WATER:**

 **"My oldest, Bonnie. She's a good girl, takes after her mother."** – In the movie, you briefly see a Bunnyburrow newspaper article about Otto Hopps that references Bonnie as his daughter. Although the movie shows her as his _youngest_ , I took a little poetic license.

 **"His fur was red because he was made by the devil."** – In one of the movie's deleted scenes, Pop-Pop appears in the background and loudly expresses this same belief.

 **~o~**

 **TOOTH AND CLAW:**

 **Happytown** – In the original version of the movie script, Happytown was the name of a notorious predator-only ghetto.

 **Cape Caracal** – A play on Cape Canaveral and a reference to one of my one-shot stories, _Rocket Lamb_

 **Redwall Mountains** – A nod to the _Redwall_ book series by Brian Jacques

 **"I _swear_ I saw it in a movie somewhere."** – He totally did; it's from G.I. Jane.

 **~o~**

 **FLESH AND STONE:**

 **Anton McMeadow** – I made up the name McMeadow, but Anton is the name of my neighbor when I was a kid. He was an engineer, too.

 **Jackalope Falls** \- The jackalope is a mythical animal of North American folklore, described as a jackrabbit with antelope horns.

 **Warren County** – A warren is an area containing multiple rabbit burrows

 **"I guess you could say that Homestead was supposed to be my retirement tour."** – My small homage to the classic 'he was just 2 days from retirement' trope.

 **~o~**

 **PARTNERS IN CRIME:**

 **"When my mom and I walked into the Bunnyburrow recruiting office, it sure didn't look like the military."** – LOL...army recruiting offices totally look like that.

 **Moon rabbit** – A story from Japanese folklore, altered slightly for my purposes

 **"Look out for the big bad fox."** – A tiny reference to Mead's "Judy Is Dead" fan comic.

 **~o~**

 **HEAVEN SENT:**

 **"When my family came over in the late eighteen-hundreds."** – Mongooses (not mongeese) were (unsuccessfully) introduced to New Zealand in the late 19th century in an attempt to reduce the snake population.

 **Lucy McCloud** – A nod to the video game Starfox.

 **If you see something that looks like it might explode if you touch it, don't bloody touch it!** – Advice given to me by a Royal Engineer when I was Afghanistan. Those guys know their business.

 **~o~**

 **THE POWER OF THREE:**

 **Control anklets / Stall collars** – A possible precursor to the Shock Collar tech from the original script.

 **Harvey's Hope / Harvey Stewart** – _Harvey_ is a famous 1950 film starring James Stewart. The story is about a man whose best friend is a six-foot tall invisible rabbit named Harvey.

 **Chauve-Souris** – Literally the French word for bat, but I thought it sounded good.

" **About three million mammals."** – For reference, the New York Times readership is 9.32 million.

 **~o~**

 **DESPERATE MEASURES:**

 **Zoogle** – Google, basically. Lol for animal puns!

 **~o~**

 **HELL BENT:**

 **Chris Cottontail** – Reference to _The Adventures of Peter Cottontail_ by author Thornton Burgess.

 **Capybara Cave** – Reference to Krubera Cave in the country of Georgia, the deepest cave ever discovered and partial inspiration for Homestead.

 **~o~**

 **BOOM TOWN:**

 **"I've got thirty of my own, and a little over two-hundred-and-fifty nieces and nephews."** – A reference to the Zootopia head-canon that Judy doesn't literally have ~300 siblings, and that the term brother or sister are loosely applied with a family to any child of a given generation.

 **Rabbit Punch** \- A quick, sharp strike to the back of the head.

 **"If you can't do something smart, do something right."** \- Reference to the TV show _Firefly_ , quote attributed to Shepherd Derrial Book

 **Uncle Charlie** – 'Charlie' or 'Charles' is a breed of rabbit, usually characterized by having a uniformly white fur.

 **"Big Damn Hero"** – Reference to the TV show _Firefly_

 **"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."** – Excerpt for the epic poem _Ulysses_ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 **~o~**

 **THE GIRL WHO WAITED:**

 **Candice Hopps** – A character from by anthology series, _Forty Glimpses_

 **Martin Abbey** \- Reference to a character in the _Redwall_ book series by Brian Jacques

 **~o~**

 **COLD BLOOD:**

 **Myles Tobin** – A character from the story _Sheriff_ in my anthology series, _Forty Glimpses_

 **Nichols, Breivik, and Kaczynski** – References to Terry Nichols (1995 Oklahoma City bombing), Anders Behring Breivik (2011 Oslo bombing), and Ted Kaczynski (The Unabomber)

 **Frank Scalpellino** – Scalpellino is Italian for stonemason or stonecutter

 **One of the dumbest things I hear from temperate-climate mammals is that they don't wear a life jacket because they can swim** – Not a reference, but still true. Wear a damn life jacket!

 **ANFO** – Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil was the explosive used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 2011 Oslo bombing.

 **Alphonse** – The given name of Al Capone

 **Padrone** – Padrone is Italian for boss or master

 **"Multiple counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, obstruction of justice, tax evasion, illegal gambling, extortion, and loansharking."** – Famed gangster John Joseph Gotti was convicted and sent to prison on these charges in 1992.

 **~o~**

 **THE PARTING OF THE WAYS:**

 **Heroes of Homestead Monument** – Inscription is inspired by a limerick from the Doctor Who episode, _The Beast Below,_ written by the brilliant Steven Moffet.

 **Pawlitzer prize** – A play on the Pulitzer Prize, an award for outstanding achievement in newspaper, magazine and online journalism.

 **Ft.** **Muridae** – _Muridae_ is the latin name for the largest family of rodents, containing over 700 species.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

 **THE "LOST INTERVIEW"**

When I was writing _Cold Blood_ , _I wanted to include a brief but funny bit with Chief Bogo. However, no matter how much I added, removed, or edited, it just felt like pointless fan-service. It just didn't add anything to the story. In the end, though, it still makes for an amusing snippet._

 **ooooo**

 **"What the hell are you doing in my office?"**

Adrian Bogo – Cape Buffalo  
Chief, Zootopia Police Department

 **ooooo**

 **Chief Adrian Bogo is, by all accounts, the very definition of intimidating. The decorated cape buffalo has been with the ZPD for nearly thirty years and has served as the Chief of Police for the last seven. I meet the him at his office in the Precinct One building.**

What the...?!

 **Good morning, Chief Bogo.**

Grayson? How the hell did you get in here?

 **I made an appointment.**

You made an _appointment_.

 **Yup. [I point to the clock on the wall] For three o'clock.**

Son of a... **[He slams a hoof down on the intercom]** CLAWHAUSER!

 **[Intercom]** Yes, Chief?

Why the hell is Edward Grayson in my office?!

 **[Intercom]** He...uh...he made an appointment?

 **Like I sai...**

 **[To me]** Shut it! I don't care about whatever it is you're here for. If you want a comment, contact the press office. **[To the intercom]** Clawhauser! No appointments with reporters!

 **[Intercom]** Yes sir!

 **Should I see myself out?**

I swear to the gods, Grayson; if you had been anyone else, you'd be on your way to the holding cells right now.

 **Understood, Chief. Always a pleasure.**

Get out of here. I have actual work to do.

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

 **THE MAMMAL BEHIND THE PEN**

 _Who is Eddie Grayson?_

 _That was an important question for me to answer, because in some ways Eddie shaped the story just as much as any other character._

 _In the earliest drafts, Eddie was a much more active character. The chapters read more like conversations than interviews, and I didn't think that was the right approach. I thought to myself; is this how a real reporter would act? Of course not. He's here for a story, so why is he the one doing all the talking? From then on, Eddie took on a significantly more passive role in the story. He asks the important questions, only occasionally stops for clarification, and does whatever he can to minimize his own presence._

 _As I kept writing the story, I developed a mental biography for Eddie. I wanted to know what kind of mammal The Herald would assign this piece to, and also who would have the kind of credibility that could convince The Herald's Editor to completely rework the story format at the last minute._

 _So, who is Eddie Grayson? Lemme tell you:_

 **Edward Marcus Grayson** (born January 21, 1982) is a Mammalian journalist and winner of the 2016 Pawitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

Born in Zootopia, Grayson received a bachelor's degree from Zoo York University's Woolard School of Journalism in 2003. He began his career as a junior reporter with The Zoo York Times in 2004 and became a columnist there in 2008. Grayson returned home in 2010 as an investigative reporter for The Zootopia Herald, where he was a Pawitzer finalist in both 2012 and 2013, both in relation to his reporting on the exploitation of minority species in the Mammalian industrial sector.

In 2016, Grayson won the Pawitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for his exposé: _Sheep's Clothing - The Lies Behind the Bellwether Administration_ (August 20, 2016). The award particularly cited "his fearless and tenacious reporting on the bigotry and innate corruption of the Zootopian government, resulting in the discovery of a focused conspiracy aimed toward subjugating traditionally predatory species."

Grayson reported that, following the resignation and arrest of former Mayor Leodore Lionheart, Interim Mayor Dawn Bellwether conducted a deliberate and systematic purge of all predators working in all levels of public service. Her office either encouraged or coerced several major media outlets into emphasizing the 'predator threat' while simultaneously working to suppress any reporting contrary to that narrative.

He wrote, "Records and interviews show how the Bellwether administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the media into a kind of Trojan horse—an instrument purported to be a source of impartial information but utilized to spread fear and mistrust from inside the major TV and radio networks."

Shortly after the exposé was published, Grayson was the victim of a violent mugging while jogging in the park. He was recovering in hospital when Wilhelm Ramsden, then Zootopian District Attorney, had Grayson placed under arrest. Ramsden cited evidence that the mugging had actually been a failed attempt to purchase illicit drugs, though these charges were categorically disproven after Ramsden himself was revealed to be complicit in the Bellwether conspiracy.

Grayson still works at The Herald. He is married to award-winning photojournalist Kara Joseph-Grayson. The pair live on Outback Island in Zootopia.

 **~o~**

 _I briefly considered writing a 1-2 chapter story about Eddie's journalistic TKO of Bellwether, but ultimately decided against it. Notwithstanding the fact that OC-centric stories are a crap-shoot in this fandom, it would also mean revealing his species. That's something I very specifically avoided doing because, when all is said and done, I don't believe is actually matters._

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~

 **EVIL IS AS EVIL DOES**

 _Dawn Bellwether was, by far, the most predicted villain in Burrow. This isn't surprising; she's probably the most-used villain in the entire fandom. And even though I read these speculations with a smile, ready for the big reveal, I was also uncertain about how it would play with the readers._

 _Bellwether was a schemer; her plans hinged on deception and misdirection. She and Doug created a situation where people thought they understood what the threat was: predators succumbing to their own biology. Prey mammals accepted that premise, because it makes a weird kind of sense to them and backs up what some of them may have been thinking. It plays because it gives them permission to think the things they've always felt guilty about thinking._

 _However, it's tough to blame structural demolition charges on 'biology'. Although it wouldn't be impossible to turn Homestead into a propaganda weapon, for the amount of effort involved – and considering that the Tri-Burrows are over 200 miles away - it didn't seem plausible to me that Bellwether would do that._

 _So, why Mr. Big?_ _In short, because he's a **ruthless criminal**. A lot of people forget that if Fru Fru had walked in only a few seconds later, Nick and Judy would have been dead; Big had literally ordered their deaths a heartbeat earlier. What's more, while he might have planned to kill Nick over what amounted to a personal insult, he was going to kill Judy over...what? Taking a tone with him? Accusing him of a crime that a first-year law student could get thrown out of court?_

 _He didn't change his mind until he learned that Judy had saved his daughter. That tells me that family matters to him a lot more than the lives of mammal he doesn't know – let alone mammals he's never met. It means so much to him that Judy saved Fru Fru, it actually exonerates Nick by association. Now, what if he suddenly didn't have any family left? What might a mammal like that – one who has power, money, brains, and a ruthless streak a mile wide – do when that single moral touchstone has been taken from him?_

 _I think he'd grasp for the first stable thing he could. I think he'd dive head first into the only other aspect of his live that made him feel like he was in control._

~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~


End file.
